This might look like an egregiously misplaced school of fish, but it's actually an example of what ornithologists (bird experts) call a murmuration:
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It's a flock of hundreds to thousands of tiny song birds called starlings. But exactly how the birds within these swarms decide to move and when is a complete mystery.
Within a murmuration, starlings are constantly on the move, so the shape is always changing.
But some photographers managed to capture some incredible, split-second moments of these flowing flocks that look strikingly similar to common shapes, like a gigantic smoking pipe, a goose, and a stingray. Check them out below:
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Starlings are indigenous to Europe, Asia, and Africa, but have since been introduced to North America and northern Australia. So if you live where these birds are prevalent, then you might catch this crazy phenomenon, like the stingray-shaped murmuration shown below:
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Source: Murmuration of Starlings
There are nearly 120 species of starlings, and they don't seem to mind mixing it up. In fact, starlings are famous for their gregarious nature. You can find multiple different species within the same murmuration.
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During nonbreeding seasons, starlings will roost together in groups of hundreds to thousands. It's usually during this same time that you'll see giant murmurations like this goose-shaped one:
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