Ah, the beauty of nature, of how when you least expect a gift of the natural world something magically appears  … even on a stretch of state highway alongside a freighter track. We were returning from a shopping trip miles from home, rolling alongside the BNSF tracks west of Appleton, MN, when we were suddenly engulfed by a murmuration of thousands of red-winged blackbirds, and an old dream, a visualization of a lifetime, suddenly came to life. 

Few remain alive to recall such moments nowadays, although some of the old guys of the prairie will talk about how their fathers and grandfathers spoke of red-winged murmurations so thick the collective birds would block out the sky. One of those guys, in his sixties at the time, was in our Master Naturalist’s class back in 2012, and as our small group worked together on a capstone project the conversation drifted toward murmurations, for it was spring and we were starting to see some come through our region of the prairie. “When I was a kid,” he said, “old timers around Redwood would talk about seeing clouds of redwings so thick they would blacken the sky.”

Such times were back when there was more than one percent of the wetlands remaining in the now extinct “prairie pothole biome.” Another old timer, back about 30 years ago when he was an aged county commissioner, spoke of similar times when he chastised me for my writing positive commentary about the “sloughs”, by saying, “You don’t have any idea of what it was like before ditching and draining. No way to farm. Nothing but damned mud and mosquitoes. You couldn’t get away from either.”

There were also birds. Millions of birds, from waders to grassland species like bob-o-links and meadowlarks, all adding color and song to the then wide open prairie. Red-winged blackbirds were there, too. Millions of them. That was then … back then before the numbers of all of the prairie birds began shrinking due to the destruction of the grass-blessed prairie and wetlands, red-winged included. Back then, come migration, murmurations formed with hundreds of thousands of birds, and when rising from the wetlands and prairie. they would block out the sun, the sky and the clouds. I’ve dreamed of having that visualization come to life ever since that conversation at the meeting and figured there would never be such an opportunity. Then this happened. On a state highway. Alongside a railroad track. A magical moment of nature.

Did they block out the sun, sky and clouds? At times, perhaps. Enough that the visualization held promise.

I’ve witnessed some huge murmurations around Listening Stones and due south about an hour or so, though hardly a flock as close and huge as this one — until this surprise nature offered us the other day, a gathering of the colorful epaulet-patched blackbirds so thick they seemingly blackened the sky.

How do you even count so many birds? If we guessed a half million we might have been close, or perhaps, even short by a few hundred thousand. Here, just west of Appleton, along a stretch of State Highway 7, balanced between some shallow wetlands with numerous cattails, a recently harvested grain field, numerous and spacious trees and a semblance of the old prairie. Yes, perhaps even a glance back to those undrained and unditched patches of prairies of old. If this hadn’t been real it would have been a mirage. A dream. Yet, I have photographic and witnessed proof.

We stopped to both watch and take pictures for nearly an hour before deciding to head on home. Then, about ten miles down the road, I pulled over and suggested to Roberta that we return just to hopefully catch the birds in the sunset about an hour or so distant. “We don’t have anything else going,” she said, “so let’s do it.” A u-turn later we were back on the other side of Correll on the way toward Appleton. The murmuration hadn’t left, seemingly nervously rising and settling, then rising as an uncountable curtain of birds. Depths of blackness, with some quite close, and through them in the distances, thousands upon thousands more. It was like a dream come true, and I thought of those who through the years have shared this odd dream of mine.

At one point several hundred landed on the highway surface, temporarily halting traffic until one brave motorist decided enough was enough and slowly crept through the birds causing them to rise once again. This caused them to then turn north along the graveled Ct. Rd 51, and we followed as closely as we could. At times it felt as if we could simply reach through the window and touch one or more of the birds since the flights were so close. Over the years I’ve seen many pictures of distant choreographic-like flight patterns of murmurations, and was hoping that might happen in a colorful sky. We wouldn’t be so fortunate. While we captured images of the distant murmuration dances, none were captured as it might have been with video. 

“Imagine what you are seeing are sandhill cranes rather than redwings,” I suggested to Roberta. “Huge birds, coming in around sunset over the Platte. This is like the crane migrations in miniature.”

Twice through those few hours highway patrol officers passed by our car as we sat with our hazard lights blinking along the highway, and one even slowed before offering a knowledgeable wave and continuing along toward Appleton. Yes, I’ve been warned before about the illegality of stopping along a highway to take pictures, so perhaps he was aware of the magic in the sky. Maybe he wished he could stop and watch, too. Yet, he waved and moved on eastward.

Not only had we parked along the highway, we were often outside standing either in front of or behind the car gazing at the sky, watching as the birds lifted in gigantic clouds from the prairie and trees, seemingly exploding up into the sky as a unit though there were umpteen thousands rising at once. Dancing in movement as though they might touch the clouds, before swooping low to kiss the spine of the prairie, or laterally as if they alone owned the heavens. Clusters thick with points of blackness, each a bird. Yes, it was magical.

Eventually the sun began to slide behind the evening clouds as the sky dance continued above us, and around us, blackened dots of red-winged blackbirds dancing in choreographic feathery clouds as nightfall claimed the prairie. Sometimes we are blessed with the pleasures nature offers us, and perhaps the secret is that we notice.