This amazing video depicts thousands, hundreds of thousands and then billions of birds -- all caught on video courtesy of the Planet Earth series. This video also features some wonderful music, a piece called "Rushing" from the album called Play by Moby, that will send chills up your spine. [2:37]
(Incidentally, those of you who saw the amazing movie, Seabiscuit, also know of Moby from another piece of his entitled "Everloving", also from the album, Play. That particular piece was the background music for when Seabiscuit ran his first race after recovering from his leg injury -- can you tell that I am madly in love with Moby?).
1.500.000.000 Birds Caught On Camera - For more of the funniest videos, click here
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Planet Earth may single-handedly convince me to buy a high-definition TV. Because on the normal kind, those scenes start pixellating badly when they zoom out. The resolution just can't cope with that many birds.
Anybody know what species are shown?
Sobering to reflect on the facts that Passenger Pigeons once flew in such unimaginably huge flocks, yet we still managed to kill every...last...one.
Excuse me, I'll just go and get my shotgun...
Bob
Very beautiful and peaceful to watch and listen to. Thanks for posting this, for I never would've seen it otherwise.
what is the name of that song
So how many birds are there on our fair planet? And just in case,
I for one welcome our avian overlords.
music lover: that is part of Moby's piece, "Rushing" from his lovely album, PLAY. i went back and linked to it above, so you can check it out or purchase it yourself.
Bob: i don't know the answer to your question, but i do know that there are not enough birds on our planet since their numbers have been so severely reduced by .. er .. guess who? this video harkens back to the amazing days of yore, when migrating birds darkened the skies.
...and, as Audubon remarked, their dung fell like snow.
Awe-inspiring, to be sure, but not very scientific!
The birds depicted toward the end of the segment are Red-billed Queleas (Quelea quelea), thought by some to be the most abundant wild bird species on the planet.
However, the total global population of the species is estimated at 1.5 billion. Red-billed Queleas range widely across much of the African continent. They do not live in one huge flock.
Red-billed Queleas are known to travel in flocks of millions -- but so are many other species.
Sorry, but there's absolutely no basis to the claim that "billions" of birds are depicted in that video segment.
The 1.5 billion figure appears to come from wikipedia, which cites that as the total breeding population. I'm a tad dubious that every member of the species formed one super-conglomeration.