The Birds in “The Final Victim” (Hellfire & Damnation III)
This video was shot some time ago, while driving home from a trip to the Children’s Museum in Bettendorf, Iowa. It was shot on 16th Avenue in East Moline, Illinois, and the birds subsequently were identified as European starlings by research into various books of bird species.
The voices you hear in the video belong to me, my daughter-in-law Jessica, and the four-year-old twins, Ava and Elise. I have no explanation for why the birds covered just a few lawns or what they were looking for, but it inspired a story entitled “The Final Victim” that will appear in Hellfire & Damnation III.
Below are a few more still photographs of the phenomenon, which I still do not pretend to understand. The oddest thing about the event was that only a very few lawns were affected. Three lawns were infested with the birds and yet they were not on the neighboring houses just a few yards down, nor across the street. Weird.