A guest post by Eliza Perry, one of our Hubbard Fellows.  All photos are by Eliza.

Giant black clouds of birds have been erupting from cottonwoods everywhere I go the past few days.

A huge overhead flock (called a murmuration when the birds are starlings).

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Another one.

Last one.

As Anne recently shared, the cows have been taken away from our prairies for the winter and, somewhat surprisingly, their absence has really been felt around here. They were quiet company, but extremely entertaining at times, creeping toward me while I picked seeds until I lurched suddenly just to watch them bolt in the other direction. Before long, they’d crept back even closer to me, and we went on like this for many hours.

I have a quick story to share that I captured driving around on the last afternoon the cows were here, though the story is as much about birds as our dear
cows. I  saw a large flock of birds along a fenceline and pulled over to the side of the road to get a better look at them. The cow-bird interaction I witnessed was, or seemed to be, quite playful. And funny.

Brown-headed cowbirds resting peacefully on a calm afternoon…

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As if on a mischievous (or vengeful?) whim, the neighboring cows rushed at them.

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The birds lifted into the air in perfect unity, an effortless coordination that is said to resemble magnetism by statistical physicists studying similar behavior by European starlings.

Reluctant to give up their spot entirely, the cowbird flock settled down again close by.

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That is, until a lone calf honest-to-goodness peeled away from the group and charged the fence, seemingly aiming right for the birds. Maybe there was another reason for his behavior, but I like to think this calf was putting on a show.

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That was apparently the last straw for the birds, and they flew away toward the river.

I know starlings are invasive, outcompeting other species like bluebirds and woodpeckers, and cowbirds have a nesting parasitism habit, but the huge flocks these creatures form are a wondrous sight. I was picking rosinweed one morning when things were going any way but mine (I thought I broke two backpack sprayers in a span of two hours), and a gigantic murmuration passed right over me for about ten minutes, with no end in sight. Just a long, chirping highway. This event, along with my renewed awareness of the quiet, scenic solitude where I work, lifted my spirits and ended my morning funk.

The prairie has a knack for doing that to me – and I imagine it does so for everyone else reading this – so I think I’ll be all right without my cow companions.