To listen

Song birds and chipmunks hold constant court in the woods around Massabessic. Loons and osprey make special appearances, garter snakes look for sun (or maybe legs and socks if they are to truly live up to their monikers), mice ruffle under the leaves attempting the surreptitious gathering of food. It is easier to hear the fauna than to see it.

Unless you’re being dive bombed by a swallow in the fields, or find a blue heron as your fishing partner along the shore.

What is unexpected is a swarm of starlings. At least their pops and clicks and incessant flocking made them out to be starlings.

Their large size and prominent tail spread were not very starling like, but the jungle like atmosphere they created was the kind of cacophony only starlings can create.

For whatever reason, hundreds of these birds decided that this bit of forest along the shore was the place to be on Monday. I watched them flock in small groups, always 10 wing beats ahead of my slow progress down the trail. The air would pulse with the beating of their wings. When part of the group took off all at once, their motion barely discernable through the trees but the audible whoosh of their collective flight giving away their motion, another person on the trail who had stopped to listen to the noise turned to me, eyes wide “Did you hear that?”

It was hard not to.

Before entering the woods I stopped to hear the solo flight of a raven as it circled the Audubon Center. A slow croak was the only other sound it made. The slow push of its wings a stark contrast to the nervous flocking that came later.