LIKE, THIS REALLY HAPPENED. Alfred Hitchcock’s classic THE BIRDS is, in part, inspired by a very real phenomenon that occurred in Santa Cruz, California in 1961. One night, inexplicably, thousands of sooty shearwater birds lost their minds, dive-bombing into homes and even biting people. But, for 50 years, no one knew why… That is, until Dr. Sibel Bargu Ates connected dots throughout history through meticulous (and rather imaginative) archive specimen research. This is a Hitchcockian mystery wrapped in a scientific paper—a biological whodunnit.

Also, in this video: we uncover a horrifying first hand account of the true-life bird invasion (which overlaps in a way with another Hitchcock film, PSYCHO). And, learn how birds flock and move together. In fact, a 1986 computer program helped solve the puzzle of how they actually fly so close without every bird in a flock ricocheting off each other like pinballs.

Said another way, this is a story all about bird brains.

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In their own words. Well, approximately their own words—they are wild animals after all.

CREDITS
Video by: Tom McNamara
Animation: Beth Wexler
Narrator: Elizabeth Ollier
Executive Producer: Amy Schellenbaum
Editor-in-Chief: Corinne Iozzio

Media
1961 Santa Cruz Sentinel bird invasion photos (courtesy Covello & Covello Photography), Archival gut contents image (2012, Nature Geoscience), “Birds of America” (1917, The University Society), Boids program (1986, courtesy Craig Reynolds), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920, Paramount film), Dr. Sibel Bargu Ates, “Gull Island” and “Inishvickillane, Blasket Islands” footage (1942, 1925, Chicago Academy of Sciences), Internet Archives, Mixed zooplankton sample (2019, Adriana Zingone, Domenico D’Alelio, Maria Grazia Mazzocchi, Marina Montresor, Diana Sarno, LTER-MC team), Oral history by Edna Messini (courtesy Capitola Historical Museum, Frank Perry), Pond5, Prelinger Archives, Pseudo-Nitzschia specimen images (NOAA/NWFSC), Santa Cruz Sentinel, “The Birds” (1963, Universal Pictures), “The Vanishing Lady” (1896, Georges Méliès)

Music
APM, Vik Sharma

Thank You
Dr. Sibel Bargu Ates (Louisiana State University, College of the Coast & Environment, Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences), Shmuel Thaler (Staff Photographer, Santa Cruz Sentinel), Dr. Cheryl Baduini (Claremont), Frank Perry (Curator, Capitola Historical Museum), Georgia Chronopoulos (Covello & Covello Photography), Wyatt Young (Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History), Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Frank Gravier (Reference Librarian, Special Collections & Archives, McHenry Library, UC Santa Cruz), Erin Chapman, Josh Engel (Red Hill Birding), Jack Furtado

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– [Narrator] In the Santa Cruz Sentinel,

August the 18th, 1961, there is an account

of thousands of birds raining
down from the sky at 3:00 AM,

crushing into homes and cars in Capitola

and Pleasure Point, California,
just off Monterey Bay.

“Eight persons were reported bitten.”

This is the bird, ardenna
grisea, the sooty shearwater.

Also noted, the word of
the bird invasion spread

fast throughout the state.

And a phone call came to the Sentinel

from mystery thriller
producer Alfred Hitchcock

from Hollywood.

– [Producer] Roll five, Alfred Hitchcock.

– [Narrator] He requested
a copy of that day’s paper.

He was, after all, adapting a particular

1952 Daphne du Maurier
story into a screenplay

on the subject of killer birds.

Less than two years later,
Hitchcock’s The Birds premiered.

(spooky music)

There’s this too, prevailing
theories at the time supposed

the sooty shearwaters got lost in the fog,

that the flock of thousands was confused.

That theory made it into Hitchcock’s film.

– Hey, something like this
happened in Santa Cruz last year.

The town was just covered with seagulls.

– Will you please finish your drink.

– That’s right, sir, I recall it.

A large flock of seagulls
got lost in the fog

and headed into the town
where all the lights were.

– And they made some mess too,

smashing into buildings and everything.

– [Narrator] You might be asking yourself

what made them do this?

Because just look at
these sooty shearwaters

navigate the fog.

If flocking birds were easily
confused in low visibility,

shearwater invasions would
be as common as passing rain.

This all makes me think to
understand what happened,

first, you need to know
how a flock of birds,

like thousands of shearwaters,
fly and move together.

(spooky music)

Ancient Romans said the
gods guided flocking birds.

At the turn of the 20th century,

learned scientists considered

natural telepathy or a group soul.

So, magic.

After all, just look at
these starlings flying.

Unlike a flock of geese, where
there’s an obvious leader,

like this captain goose right here,

any bird in a flock cluster can move

in any direction and the
others will follow suit.

That’s because flocking
birds aren’t just aware

of their immediate neighbor.

Point of fact, they’re
focusing on the small group

of birds around them, up
to six or seven, like so.

Sort of like a rippling
effect of consciousness.

In 1986, programmer
Craig Reynolds made this,

a three-dimensional flocking model.

He called his flying creatures boids.

Three simple steering
behaviors guide them.

Input one: coherence.

Fly close to the other boids.

Input two: separation.

Don’t run into your flock mates.

Input three: alignment.

Match the speed and direction
of the boids around you.

This math basically plays out in nature

each time a flock takes flight.

Kind of fantastic, right?

Now consider if a fourth
input was introduced

to the flock of boids, a piece of malware

instead of a computational rule.

That’s what happened to
the sooty shearwaters.

(low-key digital music)

Edna Masini, proprietor of
the Venetian Court Motel

on the beach at Capitola in 1961,

wrote about the day the birds came.

– [Edna] Struggling to the door,

I was awed at the sight
of hundreds of birds,

all with the cry of a baby.

They were heavy with
sardines, unable to fly,

and lost in the dense fog,

as they came in from the
sea attracted by our lights.

They slammed against the building,

regurgitating fish blood,
and knocking themselves out.

Our manager phoned me, asked what to do.

She knew it was the end of the world.

Panic set in, sure it was German warfare.

– [Narrator] Heavy with sardines

and regurgitating fish blood
are two curious observations.

The sooty shearwaters
seemed more sick than lost.

30 years past until, in
the Santa Cruz Sentinel,

September 15th, 1991,
there is another account

of confused birds in Monterey Bay.

The bird, pelecanus
occidentalis, the brown pelican,

also some cormorants.

There was no hale of birds,
like the incident in ’61,

they simply washed ashore.

But the pelicans exhibited
similar symptoms.

This time scientists determined the cause,

domoic acid poisoning.

Domoic acid is a neurotoxin
that can be produced

by several species of
pseudo-nitzschia, a micro algae

that flourishes in nutrient-rich
warm water and low wind.

What happened is domoic acid
infiltrated the food chain,

making its way into
plankton, then anchovies,

then the Brown pelicans.

And when the neurotoxin passes

through the blood-brain
barrier in birds and mammals,

it can cause confusion, disorientation,

seizures, coma, even death.

So when domoic acid
incidents became more common

in the 2000s, more Brown
pelicans, more cormorants,

and even sea lions, dots,
of course, we’re connected.

Dr. Sibel Bargu Ates, a
biological oceanographer

and professor at Louisiana
State University,

along with a team of researchers thought

maybe the dots went as far back as 1961.

In 2011, they analyzed the gut contents

of archival zooplankton specimens,

sampled from the same
location and time period

as the sooty shearwater frenzy.

And, they were full of
pseudo-nitzschia fragments,

the micro algae that produces
the domoic acid toxin,

meaning the food chain was
more than likely contaminated.

So the sooty shearwaters
didn’t get lost in the fog.

They were poisoned.

The fact they flocked
together in the thousands

and all fed on krill or sardines tainted

by the toxic micro-algae is what made

that fateful night feel
like the end of the world,

because the birds collectively lost

their minds at the same time.

One question, naturally, remains.

Why did Hitchcock’s birds attack?

– What were the crows after at the school?

– What do you think they would after Miss?

– Daniels.

I think they were after the children.

– For what purpose?

– To kill them.

(spooky music)

(spooky music continues)