Doug

A short conversation this evening:

- It’s a lovely evening.
- Really clear and bright.
- Beautiful light - I love that dark blue.
- You often get that light in the evenings or mornings, or in the middle of the night in high summer.
- I have many happy memories of that light.
- I like summer. Definitely better than winter.
- Hey, look, it’s the flock of jackdaws that lives round here.
- Are you sure it’s jackdaws? I always get those muddled up with starlings. Not the birds, I can tell the birds apart no problem, it's just the names.
- No, the flock that lives round here is definitely jackdaws.
- Beautiful - I love how they look silhouetted against the dark blue sky.
- There must be two dozen or so of them.
- That's about the right size for the flock of jackdaws that lives round here.
- I've seen more than that together at once, like maybe twice that number.
- I've seen as few as two together.
- That is the smallest number that could conceivably count as a 'flock'.
- They've stopped hanging around on next door's roof so I don't see them so often as I did.
- I saw them the other day in the tree outside my friend's house a few streets over.
- You know, I think jackdaws would be flapping their wings more than that.
- Yes, they are just holding their wings out straight and not moving them.
- Beautiful - I love how the light is twinkling off their wing tips.
- That's surprising, you don't often get light twinkling off birds.
- Hold on, look more closely - there's a flashing light.
- There's a flashing white light in the middle and a red light on one side.
- That's aircraft nav lights and a conspicuity strobe.
- Yup, that’s an aeroplane you're looking at, not a bird.
- Well that explains why they’re not moving their wings.
- Isn’t it just the evening light twinkling off their feathery wings?
- Look, that one has aircraft nav lights and a strobe too.
- Yeah, and you can clearly see it’s a four-engine job - probably a 747.
- Beautiful - I love the sight of a flock of aircraft silhouetted against the dark blue sky.
- Did you just say a flock of aircraft?
- Well the two of them we can see clearly are clearly aircraft and they are all moving together.
- Woah. That is quite unprecedented in my experience, and therefore extremely awesome.
- A flock of aircraft!
- I don’t think you tend to get aircraft flocking together.
- Beautiful - that flock of aircraft is both aesthetically and cognitively attractive to me.
- In my experience and understanding, aircraft very clearly fall outside the category of things that flock. I am therefore somewhat skeptical of this claim.
- Why are you spoiling something beautiful?
- How do you explain it then, Mr Logic?
- Hey, their collective movement pattern has changed!
- Aircraft flocking together would have real problems not smashing in to each other.
- The Red Arrows manage it.
- But they are very highly trained and are notable precisely because they can do something that other pilots find really hard, namely fly aircraft in tight formation.
- Well, maybe it’s a Red Arrows flypast or training sortie.
- Tentatively, I would rate that as even more awesome than what I thought I was seeing!
- The Red Arrows do not fly out of Cranfield, our local airport.
- We’re not that far from Brize Norton you know.
- Yeah, and jet planes fly pretty fast so distances are compressed from your experience of driving there.
- Beautiful - I love the sight of a flock of aircraft … Ok, flying things … breaking up while silhouetted against a deep blue sky.
- That is not a collective movement that is possible with even highly trained aerobatic aircraft.
- Some are moving one way and the others are moving the other.
- They flapped their wings!
- They are not jackdaws, jackdaws flap their wings differently to that.
- If they're not jackdaws, maybe they're that other bird I get the name mixed up for?
- No way am I believing in a flock of aircraft that also flap their wings.
- The ones that went rightwards definitely flapped their wings.
- What about the other ones? The ones that went left are holding very still.
- They are definitely flashing, and have red lights.
- Those two to the left are totally aircraft.
- Yup, and that one is definitely a four-engine aircraft like the 747.
- What other aircraft have four engines and are that size?
- Maybe the ones that went right are A340s or something.
- The ones on the left are definitely aeroplanes.
- There are only two of them on the left.
- The ones on the right are definitely birds.
- No way are they jackdaws.
- That doesn’t mean they’re aeroplanes.
- Sometimes when I call things jackdaws, they're not jackdaws, they're some other bird I've forgotten the name of. They don't look much alike but I get the names mixed up inexplicably. Maybe this is relevant now?
- Seagulls. They are seagulls.
- Seagulls are mostly white. These are black.
- Silhouette.
- Beautiful - I love the look of silhouettes against a deep blue sky.
- Starlings!
- What? Those are never starlings.
- No, I mean, the other birds I keep mixing up with jackdaws are starlings. I just remembered the word again. I wasn't saying these were either.
- Ah. I have it now. Good news and bad news, everyone. We have just mistaken a flock of seagulls flying in front of a pair of aeroplanes for a flock of aircraft.
- I knew a flock of aircraft was a silly idea.
- That explains everything, which makes me happy.
- That is a bit disappointing.
- It’d still make a good post on DW/LJ.
- Yup. Cheerier than the other things that I've been thinking of posting.
- It might be cool to write it up as if the multiplicity of perspectives here came from independent sources.
- A flock of aircraft was a fun, weird idea while it lasted.
- Beautiful - I have seen such wonders.
- Yes, and some of them even had the merit of existing in consensus reality.