These Mesmerizing Videos Reveal The Hidden Flight Paths Of Birds

PublishedFebruary 16, 2015

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These videos, recorded by Dennis Hlynsky, a professor at Rhode Island School of Design, are showing the flight paths of various birds like crows, starlings, seagulls, black vultures, purple martins and sparrows, among others.

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According to Hylynsky:

To some degree these videos are studies of mob behavior. Are these decisions instinctual or a small thoughtful considerations? Does one leader guide the group or is there a common brain? Is a virus a single creature or a diffused body that we inhabit? So many of these patterns are visualizations of randomization. Is randomization an instinctual or predictive? Are creatures naturally prone to randomness rather than the organization to which humans aspire?

These Mesmerizing Videos Reveal The Hidden Flight Paths Of Birds

Sunset over Providence, Rhode Island, with crows

Seagulls in Wildwood, New Jersey

Purple martins

Black vultures over Cape May, New Jersey

Starlings takeoff, recorded at 200 frames per second

Sparrows, shot with a high speed camera in nine seconds

Over Seekonk, Massachusetts

Flight of a small northern cloudywing

Crows over Providence, Rhode Island

Sunset in a swamp

Bonus: Flight of seagulls within an hour, filmed over Cornwall, England, by Paul Parker, 2015