“Exceptional, Spooky and Beautiful” Moments With Birds: Dennis Hlynsky’s Creepy Nature Videos

If, by some stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, the end timers have it right, I hope artist Den­nis Hlyn­sky will con­sid­er set­ting up his tri­pod as demons spew forth from the earth­’s crust.

His small brains en masse project has me con­vinced that he is the per­fect per­son to cap­ture such an event. Have a look at how he doc­u­ments the com­ings and goings of birds.

I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced a star­ling mur­mu­ra­tion myself, out­side of the famous, shot-on-the-fly footage (right above) of Sophie Wind­sor Clive and Lib­er­ty Smith, indie film­mak­ers who chanced to find them­selves in the right canoe at the right time, ornitho­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing. I admire these young wom­en’s sang-froid. I would’ve been cow­er­ing and slash­ing at the air with my pad­dles. That fun­nel cloud of black wings is unnerv­ing even from the safe remove of my liv­ing room, but a groovy sound­track by Nomad Soul Col­lec­tive encour­ages even the most bird-pho­bic amongst us (me) to see it as some­thing gor­geous and awe-inspir­ing, too.

Hlyn­sky does­n’t attempt to lead the wit­ness with reas­sur­ing sound cues. Instead, he amps up the creepy via “extrud­ed time,” lay­er­ing sequences of frames atop one anoth­er until the dark­est pix­els become trac­ers empha­siz­ing flight paths. The com­bi­na­tion of every­day sound and visu­al por­tent makes it dread­ful­ly easy to imag­ine one’s truck break­ing down at an inter­sec­tion right around the 7 minute mark.

Per­haps I’ve seen too many zom­bie movies.

Or have I?

Hlyn­sky is obvi­ous­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by nature, but he also states that “to some degree these videos are stud­ies of mob behav­ior. Are these deci­sions instinc­tu­al or 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?”

Put anoth­er way, per­haps there’s a rea­son it’s called a mur­der of crows, as opposed to a brunch, hug or sweat­shirt of crows. Hlyn­sky, who’s the type of guy to seek their com­pa­ny out, describes his time spent film­ing them to be among the most “excep­tion­al, spooky and beau­ti­ful” moments of his life.

As for these New Jer­sey seag­ulls, “throw a french fry in the air and with­in 30 sec­onds the entire screech of birds will come.” Yikes. Here, extrud­ed time con­spires with the ambi­ent sounds of a board­walk amuse­ment park, in a tour-de-force of avian-inspired psy­chic unrest.

Pag­ing Tip­pi  Hedren… I’m out of here!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Para­Hawk­ing in Nepal: What It’s Real­ly Like to Fly with Birds

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wish­es she had a cat instead of a mean, orange-striped owl. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday