![]() ![]() See this article's accompanying photo gallery What else can it be?” mused one British naturalist, rather plaintively, in 1931. Scientists of the early 20th century, perhaps almost as credulous, groped for such mysterious and even mystical concepts as “natural telepathy” or a “group soul.” “It is transfused thought, thought transference-collective thinking practically. The ancient Romans had their explanation: Gods, they believed, hinted at their intentions in the way birds flew. Since primeval times people have looked at masses of birds moving as one and wondered how they do it. A distant murmuration of starlings-and yes, that really is the marvelous term for a group of these often-maligned birds-10,000 or more, rolls “like a drunken fingerprint across the sky,” as the poet Richard Wilbur wrote, smudging the dusk horizon with the quickness of a pulsating jellyfish.
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