“The study of murmurations is part of a larger field of study called ‘swarm intelligence’ or ‘collective animal behavior’ – the spontaneous, synchronous movement of schools of fish, herds of mammals, swarms of bees or locusts, and other animal groups.  The property of a higher order arising out of seeming randomness is a phenomenon called ’emergence,’ and numerous scientists are trying to get to the bottom of it… One researcher who specializes in the study of animal swarms believes that the dance of the dunlins, and other flocks, may be a product of, as well as generate, what is called metacognition, a collective mind that is much bigger and smarter than the sum of its parts.” 

          From THE WONDER OF BIRDS by Jim Robbins

“A drunken fingerprint rolling across the sky.”
       Richard Wilbur

From the beach, suddenly, entrancement!
We call out, point, freeze in our shoes
our warm hats and jackets, as the day wanes
and against its steel grey background, a cloud
of swallows like a spray of buckshot swoops low
to the water, changes direction and color,
black to white, hundreds of tiny simultaneous
impulses flipping like the snap of a Venetian blind
and they are off, swirling behind us up the beach
as we tip our heads back, mesmerized: metacognition,
iron filings pulled around the sky by an invisible
magnet: One Mind.  There is some kind of joy
in what we can’t explain, how they do not bang
their bodies together and fall, how they know
when to turn, lift, flip, no long-necked leader
honking at the apex of a V, and anyway no time;
in 15 milliseconds they alter course, bank and dive
as one enormous being.  Our mouths open grinning,
incredulous, not knowing how to believe in
something that we feel
but cannot possibly know.