It wasn’t a murmur I heard, by no means. But it was a murmuration I saw, though I didn’t know at the time the word for the swirling aerial ballet of thousands of flocking, migrating blackbirds.
The frenetic swirl of organized chaos rose out of the picked cornfield and rushed toward me like a living cloud, like a billowing curtain of smoke. Then the birds scattered among the treetops, alighting in bare branches in front of me, behind me and to my right and left. Some birds landed in the same maple tree from which I watch for deer.
Against a quintessential November sky of steely gray, I was surrounded by rackety blackbirds silhouetted like so many black leaves replacing the fallen leaves of color. But it was not a stealthy invasion. The flock carried with it a loud and steady screeching and squawking, cascading from all directions above me. Was it the chatter of tension or freedom?
I closed my eyes in an attempt to define the noise that had interrupted the silence. It was like rain pounding on leaves, or a scratchier version of spring peepers. But what mostly came to mind was the staticky crackle of radio beyond a station’s range.
The birds were so dark against the sky that I could not identify species, but I know that in such flocks are red-winged blackbirds, grackles, starlings and cowbirds. To think that these birds of black, so vociferous in their defense of nesting territory in the spring, are now joined in the urgency of fall migration tells us something about the powerful rhythms of propagation and survival.
I have seen and heard this before in the November woodlots, this brief, noisy layover of the winged southbound. It never ceases to amaze me as I wonder why a hummingbird, for example, makes a solo migration flight, and a long one at that to Central America, while blackbirds flock in the hundreds and thousands for fall migration to southern states.
So how did this flock, any migrating flock, assemble? Are the birds drawn to a field simultaneously to feed for the trip ahead? Or do flocks begin modestly, joining forces every few fields until a super flock emerges and murmurs, its dizzying dance intended to confuse predators?
Before I was aware of the birds gathered in the cornfield, a barred owl passed silently, slicing through the leafless treetops. I didn’t recall that until later when I read that owls will feed on songbirds, sometimes in daytime. Did the owl trigger the flock to flee the field?
The blackbirds seemed anxious and agitated in their noise, and in their flitting from one branch to another, one tree to another, until they worked themselves into a frenzied decision to move on. It had all lasted only five minutes. They reassembled the murmuration somewhere above me, and took the noise with them.
The muted woods were all mine again. Stimulated and awed by this avian phenomenon, I grasped the mystery in the bare branches, and the beauty of the rusty, leaf-textured forest floor as the sun found a rift in the clouds. I settled back against the tree trunk. Staring into the bare soul of autumn, I heard the echo of the billowing cloud.
Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through me, at bookstores, and from online sellers. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is available at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s, and in Marquette, Mich., at Snowbound Books.