Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 thriller The Birds was loosely based, of course, on the novella of the same name by English suspense author Daphne du Maurier. Certain events in the early 1960s spurred Hitchcock to translate it to the screen despite the technical difficulties he faced in the special effects area. These bird-related events make rather creepy reading.
Birds started acting strangely beginning on or about April 26, 1960, in La Jolla, California, "where a thousand birds flew down a chimney and ravaged the inside of a house." [1] Soon thereafter "Residents in a quiet Midwestern town -- the quintessential American Hitchcock setting -- suddenly found themselves under invasion by a covey of barn swallows, who seemed to delight in dive-bombing newsboys . . . Flocks of screeching sea gulls were reported to be terrorizing fishing ports along Germany's North Sea coast, pilfering piles of fresh fish and attacking fishermen and chimneysweeps." [2]
Several characters in the restaurant scene in The Birds discuss an event that occurred on the night of August 17-18, 1961. The August 18 Santa Cruz Sentinel headlined the story as "Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes." Gulls known as sooty shearwaters, "migrating from New Zealand and South America in flocks numbering in the 'millions', crashed into cars and buildings, broke television aerials and streetlamps, and tried to enter houses when the residents ran out to investigate the noise at 3.00 a.m." [3] The birds "pecked people, smashed into houses and cars, knocked out car headlights, broke windows, chased people around the streets and staggered around vomiting pieces of anchovy over local lawns." [4] According to film historian Camille Paglia, Alfred Hitchcock jumped on the story so quickly, the Sentinel mentions him calling the paper for information that very morning.
Hitchcock officially began work on his film on March 22, 1962, and even this was shadowed by eerie synchronicities. On that day a red-tailed hawk started attacking children in Victoria Park and had to be shot. Cinefantastique magazine mentions that "a Bodega Bay farmer approached Hitchcock during filming to report that he was having trouble with birds pecking out the eyes of his young lambs." [5]
There are probably complicated natural explanations for the pre-Hitchcock avian "attacks". The Santa Cruz invasion has been blamed on domoic acid in the fish eaten by birds in Monterey Bay. An algae called Pseudo-nitzschia australis produces domoic acid when it is starved of certain nutrients, and this toxin builds up in fish and crustaceans -- and anything that eats them. It can cause erratic behavior, aggressiveness, and, eventually, death. [6]
Other avian anomalies do not lend themselves so easily to analysis. A man named Nicholas Bourne collected testimonies from eye-witnesses about an incredible "bird war" of the seventeenth century and published a pamphlet entitled The Wonderful Battel of Starelings, Fought at the Citie of Corke, in Ireland, the 12 and 14 of October, 1621. Before the "war" thousands of birds massed for days to the east and west of Cork. At 9:00 AM on October 12, 1621, the fighting began. Bourne reported: "[T]hey forthwith at one instant took wing, and so mounting up into the skies, encountered one another with such a terrible shock, as the sound amazed the whole citie . . . Upon this sudden and fierce encounter, there fell down into the citie, and into the rivers, multitudes of starelings, some with wings broken, some with legs and necks broken, some with eyes picked out, some their bills thrust into the breasts and sides of their adversaries."
The battle lasted all day, then, for some reason, the birds regrouped and clashed anew over the Thames estuary, east of London, on the 13th. On October 14, the birds returned to Cork, their bodies hailing down by the score on rooftops and roads. [7] Bourne implies that this "war" was carried out with planning and forethought, just like a human engagement, a belief doubtless shared by his contemporaries. Its true causes will probably remain unknown.
The brains of birds are constructed differently than those of mammals. Some biologists consider them to be much more intelligent than previously assumed. Even so, they could not plot and carry out large-scale assaults -- could they?
Always be kind to your fine feathered friends, just in case. Toss bread and popcorn to the ducks in the park and spread birdseed around the yard. Maybe they won't peck the hand that feeds them.
1. Paglia, Camille. BFI Film Classics: The Birds. (London: British Film Institute, 1998), p. 10.
2. Counts, Kyle B., and Steve Rubin. "The Making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds." Cinefantastique Vol. 10, no. 2 (Fall 1980), p. 26.
3. Paglia, pp. 10-11.
4. "Deranged by Dodgy Anchovies." Fortean Times No. 83 (Oct.-Nov. 1995), p. 10.
5. Counts and Rubin, p. 26.
6. Fortean Times, op. cit.
7. Michell, John, and Robert J. M. Rickard. Living Wonders. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983), p. 155, quoting Nicholas Bourne.