Starlings

Even if you've ever seen a flock of starlings fly in formation you'll enjoy this article from the New York Times called "Flight Patterns" by Jonathan Rosen (Apr. 22, 2007) : (www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22birds.t.html):

"It is, of course, natural for birds to surrender individual autonomy to the flock; according to the Roman ornithologist Claudio Carere, who has identified 12 basic flock patterns, the starlings are primarily trying to evade falcons. But we project onto the natural world a large measure of ourselves. In ancient Rome, augurs studied the flight patterns of birds to divine the will of the gods; part of the fascination of the starlings is the way they seem to be inscribing some sort of language in the air, if only we could read it."

If you've never seen Starlings fly you'll like to watch this video from Wikipedia. There's probably nothing on earth more spectacular:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8761390434094738310.

And if you still haven't had enough please see these photographs of the starlings takne by Richard Barnes (found at kottke.org):

http://www.richardbarnes.net/murmur01.html

Like the Romans, my first interest was to find out what the 12 basic flock patterns are and associate one for every sign of the zodiac. Fortunately, that information isn't easy to find, or I'm not that crazy. Actually, I am that crazy, but am also really spacy and lazy these days.

I think it is interesting to understand that these birds, like a lot of wild beasts, are born in the Spring and Summer. They mate in the early Spring. They nest and raise their young in Spring and Summer. This means that most are born while the Sun is in the first half of the Zodiac. From watching them I assumed they would have to all be Pisces, collective unconscious and all. There certainly aren't any loner Scorpios, independent Sagittarians or Innovator Aquarians in the crowd. They cause problems for humans because they nest in any empty cavity and plug up vents in houses. Sorry, that must be the Cancers.