DO LORIKEETS SYNCHRONISE WING-BEATS?<\/p>\n
I think so. However, one’s senses are so easily fooled under certain circumstances, especially on the balcony of the Noosa Surf-Lifesaving Club on a beautiful beery late-afternoon.<\/p>\n
I was facing landward, having had my fill of the excoriating ocean, my eyes requiring the restful green of the hill behind Hastings Street.<\/p>\n
The sun was setting on the burned beach-goers, the traffic grinding slowly on the roundabout below, and against a technicolor violet sky the massive eucalypts near my perch swarmed with raucous lorikeets; their evening ritual preparatory to the nightly roost.<\/p>\n
Perfectly relaxed by the ale, the day in the surf, and the exquisite sensation of a clean shirt on salty skin, I allowed my mind to examine in focused clarity the behaviour of the lorikeets, where it seemed something strangely hallucinogenic was happening.<\/p>\n
The large noisy flock was performing its short evening ritual; settling briefly within the high branches before taking-off en-mass to circle the tree and the sky at tremendous speed.<\/p>\n
It was as the flock raced past between my perch and theirs, not more than fifty metres away, that a strange flickering affected my vision, as if eyesight were briefly malfunctioning: perhaps the alcohol, the ocean exertions, the savage ultra-violet.<\/p>\n
Now curious and particularly focused, I concentrated on the flock as its circuit passed: same weird effect. Not my eyes, then, but the flock itself, which for a brief second seemed to flicker as it passed me. As if the frame of a film became momentarily jerked.<\/p>\n
As the circuits passed I realised what caused the phenomenon.<\/p>\n
The flock was behaving in a way, like one unit. As shoals of fish do mysteriously; a million fish with one body, one brain.<\/p>\n
Once airbourne and assembled, the lorikeets assumed one personality in their flock; completely synchronised, each wingbeat and manoevre mirrored in each bird simultaneously.<\/p>\n
As the flock passed me, and this is the tricky part, every bird raised and lowered its wings as one. Every wing went up, then down. A thousand tightly-packed birds as one. The banked angle of turn emphasised the illusion of a flickering, faulty image, impossible, because of speed of the wingbeats, to reconcile in a limited human brain, which perceived a juddering image.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it was just me, just my perception. I have had the phenomenon repeated a few times; on each occasion wishing for a slow-motion camera to resolve the effect.<\/p>\n
Ain’t Life wonderful?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DO LORIKEETS SYNCHRONISE WING-BEATS? I think so. However, one’s senses are so easily fooled under certain circumstances, especially on the balcony of the Noosa Surf-Lifesaving Club on a beautiful beery late-afternoon. I was facing landward, having had my fill of … Continue reading