There Is a Magic Number
Interestingly, even though a murmuration can involve thousands of starlings, the birds apparently aren’t coordinating with every other bird in the formation. In 2008, Italian scientists found evidence that suggests that starlings coordinate with their nearest six to seven neighbors. To arrive at this conclusion, the scientists photographed and analyzed 10 independent “flocking events” at a railway station in Rome. They then used stereometric and computer vision techniques to measure birds’ individual position in 3D in the murmurations.
