When Hitchcockian horror came true: The 1960s killer bird swarm that inspired "The Birds" [View all]

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When Hitchcockian horror came true: The 1960s killer bird swarm that inspired "The Birds"
In 1961, birds dive-bombed, tumbled through the air as if drunk, and drenched the town of Capitola in vomit

By MATTHEW ROZSA
Staff Writer
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 19, 2023 7:30PM (EST)


(Salon) Sixty years ago in March 1963, Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror movie "The Birds" introduced viewers to a small seaside town in California that is suddenly and inexplicably attacked by ferocious feathered fiends. Ostensibly based on a 1952 short story by Daphne du Maurier, "The Birds" features seagulls, crows and a range of other bird species as they ruthlessly slash at terrified humans with razor-sharp beaks and talons. The high concept flick was a box office hit and is widely considered to be one of the greatest creature features ever made.

Yet while du Maurier's short story is certainly worth a read, Hitchcock was also inspired by a real-life tale in many ways more bizarre than its fictional counterpart. Like "The Birds," it was set in early 1960s rural California — Capitola, to be exact, which is adjacent to the Monterey Bay (in the movie, the action is set in "Bodega Bay" ). Just like the characters in the film, the real-life residents of Capitola in 1961 were shocked when swarms of birds attacked them out of nowhere. Yet unlike the movie — in which no explanation for the birds' behavior is ever supplied — there is actually a plausible scientific explanation for why the Capitola birds seemed to declare war on the nearby humans.

When residents of Capitola woke up that foggy early morning on August 18, 1961, they were greeted by flocks of birds dive-bombing into their houses. Although a number of species were involved, the majority of the birds were later identified as sooty shearwaters, which are usually harmless to humans and instead are best known for acrobatically diving into waters for fish. As their name indicates, sooty shearwaters have a gray-and-brown palette that makes them rather unremarkable visually; if a seagull's wings were stretched out, and it rolled around in a chimney or fireplace, it would look something like a sooty shearwater. Yet the same aerial skills that made sooty shearwaters into nightmares for fish were suddenly being employed against humans. In addition to crashing into buildings, the hundreds and hundreds of birds were tumbling through the air as if they were drunk on a bender.

"Dead and stunned seabirds littered the streets and roads," reported the Santa Cruz Sentinel that very day, and the newspaper wasn't exaggerating. In addition to living out a scene that would later become iconic (albeit with pigeons) in the schlocky 2003 sci-fi movie "The Core," the sooty shearwaters had also drenched Capitola in vomit. Since sooty shearwaters' diet is fish-based, this meant that partially digested anchovies were sprayed on citizens and property along with the feathers, feces and — even more mysteriously – the corpses of the aggressive avians themselves. When residents rushed out of their homes with flashlights so they could better see, the birds savagely swooped toward the light beams. The birds flew into television lines, caused power outages and littered fish skeletons all over the streets. The community was suffused in "an overpowering fishy stench," according to the Sentinel. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/19/the-birds-real-killer-algae-alfred-hitchcock/