UNIDENTIFIED FLITTING OBJECTS

This is not about soaring, but it's about learning so what's the difference, right?

Out on the open Mojave this drowzy October, a lulling breeze is suddenly pierced by intense vibratory WHIFFing overhead so rapid and close it makes you duck. Zooming away at better than thirty knots is a tight formation of maybe a hundred small whitish blurs. Darting up to whisk roundabout all as one creature, they swoop back down the way dayglo fish do in tropical shallows. The birds' zesty flight path implies response to features of airspace unlike those currents we glider pilots seek. Bugs presumably, but who's to say? (Vocally, they're quite silent.)

You try to watch, but soon they're a quarter mile off and so low that only unison wing flashes show when the squad jukes a new direction. You lose interest and look away. Then from nowhere WHIFF, they streak by the other way, startling you again! Enough to make a gentleman spill his tea.

They're too quick to get a sharp look at and seem to never slow down, much less perch. I tried the BIRD fieldbook but became disorented as always and got into a flat spin... So now it's your job, somebody out there, to find who these little strafers are and what they're up to. Okay? Okay.

Now get busy.