Halo of Darkness

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One cold rainy autumn evening several years ago, I went to pick up Sofia from the Customs Canada Revenue Agency building (tax building) on Heron Road (it is the building just south of the red blip).

It was an evening saturated with gloomy foreboding. The trees were bare and the wind drove a chilling rain. The roads were greasy and shiny from the oily black rain. A tumultuous and turbulant wasteland of scarred clouds boiled in the sky.

As I approached the building, I noticed what I thought was some weird atmospheric phenomena around the top of the building - a swirling ring of dark cloud, a freak eddy of winds herding noxious nightime vapours into a black halo around the building.

When I got out of the car, I realized that it was not some freak wind and clouds, but thousands upon thousands of crows circling the building, cawing loudly.

I have no idea if this is normal crow behaviour, but it certainly was very atmospheric.

Comments

BarbaraMG said…
Crow's are creepy birds and they were doing on purpose to freak people out.
May 21, 2006 12:10 AM
Prince Romp said…
I think they mistaken the building as 'scare crow'. It reminds me of this movie...Jeepers creepers.
May 21, 2006 4:11 AM
Richard said…
It was definitely something out of a horror film or Hitchcock's "The Birds"
May 21, 2006 6:48 AM
Lunafish said…
We have a similar phenomenon in Austin Texas by the Congress Street Bridge with Bats.
May 21, 2006 9:06 AM
my imperfect offering said…
Ooh, that does sound creepy. No wonder they call it a "murder" of crows...
May 21, 2006 10:08 AM
Richard said…
lunafish: that's a pretty good picture of what I saw (I did look for pictures of swarming birds / bats, but found nothing terribly suitable).

MIO: murder of crows, wake of vultures, conspiracy of politicians, frenzy of lawyers - there are all sorts of interesting collective nouns (I made the last two up - rather cynically, I might add :-)
May 21, 2006 10:54 AM
Grumpy but sweet said…
Something really similar happens here in the Netherlands in the Autumn. I think its fabulous. But I am strange that way. They all roost in a few trees together, and then take off in a fabulous wave of black movement.

Here is a link to someone else's pictures of this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-challenge/106300792/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-challenge/115944147/
May 23, 2006 7:18 AM
Richard said…
Ingrid, pretty cool!

I wish I'd had a camera with me - although, I would have needed high speed film.
May 23, 2006 10:29 AM
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