In the fall of the year the Tree Swallows mass for migration, and at major migration stop-overs, like Cape May NJ, the swarms of Swallows can take on impressive proportions. I caught one in action at Cape May Meadows Migratory Bird Sanctuary yesterday. The Swallows filled a fair patch of sky with an intricate dance of rapid flight and high speed maneuvers, and then, suddenly, they all took the notion, at exactly the same second, to settle on a single bush. The motion of the swarm was like water going down a drain. The birds coalesced and spiraled down toward the bush, settling for seconds in its branches, 500 or more of them covering the bush like a living blanket, and then just as suddenly, they would break away and spiral up, to disperse to their arial maneuvers again. They did this, not once, but at least ten times as I watched. It was impressive!

This shot is just as they decided to take to the air again: actually toward the end of the departure. The Swarm had thinned enough to see individual birds. I like it particularly because of the way the low morning light illuminates the spread wings, and because so many of the individual birds are sharply caught. It has a powerful sense of arrested motion, and as your eye travels over it, many interesting patterns emerge. I have a whole sequence of this leap to flight, and of them this shot best captures the effect of coordinated chaos.

Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.

And for the Sunday Thought. We have very little understanding of how the intricate, and tightly coordinated, flight maneuvers of a flock of Swallows happen.  These tight spirals in particular are hard to explain. What kind of communication is required to tame the apparent chaos, and how do the birds keep from hitting each other and knocking each other out of the air?

I know that when I see the Swallows in their spiral I feel a thrill, an amazement, an awe. Later on I come to the questions about how it is possible, but while I am watching, I am simply flooded with delight. In fact, I am not sure I want to know how it happens. I have a certain intellectual curiosity about how it is possible, but that curiosity is way overwhelmed by the joy in the fact that it does…and the sense of privilege in being there to see it. I don’t actually have to know how it happens.

And, aside from the difficulty of designing any kind of experiment to determine how it happens in a scientific way, that awe is maybe why we don’t know.

There are some things, I think, that are just too wonderful to yield to analysis. Like love for instance. Or joy itself. I am certain that there is a miracle of coordinated chaos in the chemistry of the brain that mimics the spiral of the swallows, that outdoes the spiral of the swallows, when we settle into delight. And a chemical energy just as restless and irresitably amazing as our thoughts take flight once more. Some things I don’t have to understand. Some things are enough to experience. For some experiences the privilege of being there is all you need to know.

Happy Sunday!