There’s a big flock of birds—of starlings, actually. And I guess they’re not called a “flock” of starlings but a “murmuration” of starlings, which I learned from my Twitter friend Keith Freeburn, a photographer in Wales, last time I wrote a post about starlings.

Anyway, this murmuration of starlings has assembled itself in our neighborhood over the past week or so. The birds fly as a single, shape-shifting group from block to block, gathering en masse in tall trees here, there, and everywhere. I was walking back up to the house just now from taking out garbage when I noticed the group starting to muster in our tall silver maple.

Whenever I see stuff like this, my mind immediately defaults to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. As a young teen watching that movie on the late, late show while babysitting, I was left permanently scarred by what Jessica Tandy saw when she went to check on her neighbor after the initial incidents of troubling changes in bird behavior occurred.

Fortunately the worst these guys will do (I hope!) is create their traveling cacophony among the treetops and leave a mess of droppings in their wake below.