bioephemera is art + biology - anything and everything from representations of science in art and literature to the neuroscience of aesthetics. Along with lots of other stuff that's just plain interesting.
Jessica Palmer is a biologist & artist currently based in Washington, DC. She spent the last few years teaching at a small state college out West, and now plays with science policy. Her homepage includes the bioephemera archives & a gallery of her work.
Note: the contents of this blog are the personal opinions of the author, completely independent of any organizations with which she is affiliated.
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Category: Biology • Film, Video & Music • Frivolity
Posted on: July 14, 2008 11:37 PM, by Jessica Palmer
You may have already seen this video over at Boing Boing, but I thought it was worth posting anyway: a flock of what look like starlings doing some seriously creepy flocking. Check out the ribbon formation about ten seconds in. It literally gave me goosebumps!
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Comments
Hadn't seen it yet, thanks! Starlings are great mimics too, we used to have one at Amsterdam ZOO that did a great photocamera-shutter imitation. Imagine that whole flock making such a sound, or doing a ringtone..
Posted by: Jan-Maarten | July 15, 2008 7:39 AM
I lived in Albany, GA for one year when I was 13. This sort of thing happened every year like clockwork, with rivers of these birds flowing through the skies.
Posted by: Jim G | July 15, 2008 11:33 AM
And I thought starlings were creepy BEFORE I saw that.
Posted by: mdvlist | July 16, 2008 11:53 AM
We get these in Arkansas, usually starts in the beginning of fall, usually in the evenings.
My favorite was a ribbon of birds about 3 miles long that had a pseudo-wave-motion, like stadium humans doing the wave by flying higher or lower by 100 feet.
Starlings only creep me out when all 50 thousand land in the yard at once.
Posted by: Matt | July 17, 2008 10:39 AM
Wow - we had nothing like that back at home. It sounds like this is another aspect of the rest of the nation that I'll have to get used to, along with fireflies (cool!) and horseshoe crabs (freaky!)
Posted by: Jessica Palmer | July 17, 2008 4:03 PM
If only we could capture amazing things on film (other than pavement neurons), then we'd surely have just as much traffic as Yahoo.
Posted by: John Ohab | July 19, 2008 10:50 PM