multivortex bird swarms

[Sean Mullen]

I saw a video recently on CNN about clouds of starlings swarming in Isreal. Wikipedia entry for "starling" has the following video at the bottom under external links:
http://vimeo.com/31158841 (don't worry about out-of-focus beginning; gets going about 00:22)

Found this on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-groCeKbE (can skip ahead to about 3:00 or so)

The world is just awesome......

Sean

 

[Greg McLaughlin]

Interesting. It is called murmuration. My guess is that the birds ride the air currents. If this is true then we are seeing what airflow right above the surface looks like when wind shear is present. At times it does appear to have a "sheet-like" effect....something which could be ingested (assuming sufficient instability is present) into an updraft. Get the right kind of RFD interaction and tornadogenesis is underway. I could see that as a possibility. Here is a great presentation on such a hypothesis: https://ams.confex.com/ams/26SLS/flvgateway.cgi/id/23029?recordingid=23029