The Sound of 5,000 Rusty Hinges

Sometimes nature is just plain ugly

A few thousand blackbirds swirled through the air above the trees at the edge of the marsh where I found myself at dusk in a magical spectacle of apparently telepathic* coordination, the great flocks of birds rippling and shifting almost as one creature against a sky blushing with dusk. The flocks grew as smaller (as in just a hundred or so birds) groups flew in and landed in trees, and then more did, and then the now-larger group would take off from the trees and move to a different stand of trees where more small flocks joined them, and so on. As they took off, thousands of wingbeats amounted to a sound like a dry, buzzing applause. Then they landed in a stand of red maples and pin oaks next to me. I wished they hadn’t. 

Sometimes nature isn’t pretty. I’m not talking about the simply-dull, like a flat, cloudy sky or a snake resting in a burrow, out of sight, for 90% of its time. And I’m also not talking about the gruesome aspects of nature, like a caterpillar eaten alive by a wasp larva or a fish drowning in the air as its puddle dries up. I’m talking about the aesthetically ugly. 

We usually celebrate the sounds of birds. Think of the flute-like song of the wood thrush, or the spunky warble of the house wren. In the spring our neighborhood resounds with the haunting owl-like call of mourning doves, and robins sing from old TV antennas on our rooftops. 

But have you stopped and listened to the calls of rusty blackbirds, starlings, grackles, and red-winged blackbirds? They are all variations on creaking and grating, with lots of short chip notes thrown in. Multiply all those unpleasant-to-neutral noises by a few thousand, and it’s quite the cacophony. 

As I hoped they would shut up, a slightly more ominous noise accompanied the birds’ vocal racket: a pitter patter on the dry leaves beneath them. A few yards away, the falling bird poop was no threat to me, but if they moved to the trees right next to me, I’d have to move. 

Suddenly the entire horde of blackbirds took off in a panicked cloud, all shooting in the same direction away to the south. I glanced in the opposite direction and saw the reason: a Cooper’s hawk gliding in. The hawk landed in a pin oak that the blackbirds had just vacated. I’m not sure if it was hunting or just in the mood to sit in that particular tree. Perhaps it enjoyed the sense of power that comes with forcing thousands of birds to flee with your mere presence. The hawk called with its own underwhelming vocalization, like a toy squeaky hammer tuned down a bit - something you’d expect from a woodpecker rather than a fearsome predator. Another hawk that I couldn’t locate answered it from the east. I peered through the tree branches trying to find it, and when I turned my back, hawk number one was gone. 

The blackbirds returned, filling trees a few yards away from me. Inspired by the events of a few minutes before, I actually played the call of a Cooper’s hawk on my phone, but the noisy blackbirds ignored it. They also ignored kestrel and peregrine falcon calls. 

Finally, a few minutes later, and for reasons I can only guess at, the entire flock took off again and didn’t return. 

Robins drifted in as the light faded, adding up to maybe a dozen where the thousands of blackbirds had been. I heard the soft rustling of sparrows in the dead leaves. 

*They don’t actually read each other’s minds. Apparently they anticipate the move that’s coming, and so they’re ready to react quickly when the flock starts to change direction.