If you remember the movie, “The Birds,” an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, you will understand this week’s column! The swarm came in on at least two different evenings, The Colonel saw them both times. I only saw them once but he told me about it the first time he saw it…I thought he was making it up or was exaggerating the whole thing. Well, neither of those thoughts was correct.
It was almost dusk, still bright enough outside to see everything clearly, but heading towards nighttime. He told me there was a big swarm of birds that were just flying all around the front yard, over the house, through the trees, everywhere! He thought they were swallows, the kind we don’t like that make mud nests on the porches. He said there must have been at least 50. I thought to myself, the only kind of bird that comes around here in that number is crows and I knew he knew what a crow looked like. When I looked out I didn’t see anything but he said they had all just left.
So, Friday night, The Colonel came running in saying come look at these birds. I opened the Sun Porch door that he had just gone out of and when I saw the birds that movie is the first thing that came to my mind. There was not just 50 birds, there were at least 75-100 of them. They did look like swallows and they were on a flight to who knows where. They were flying everywhere in all different directions. I was surprised they didn’t run in to each other. They stayed for a while, never landing, just flying. It wasn’t as if they were trying to find some place to roost. One time a “Bird Man” called me after I had written a story about an unusual bird. I wish he would call me again. I had his number but lost it when I waded in the creek to help fix the water gaps and had my cell phone in my pocket. The Red Oak Ranch has some strange happenings every once in a while!
