Kirk Ross gets the sound down from Thursday’s flyover of Chapel Hill by Navy jets on Exile on Jones Street. But I was set upon by equally unsettling fliers that morning.

First there was their chatter in the distance. Then the swooshing and the too loud movement of air. Then the darkening of the sky. They wove an unpredictable flight pattern as the went over me near dawn. A good look showed that they weren’t even all the same. A collection of black birds — starlings, cowbirds, grackles and a blackbird or two. Hundreds streaming over.

Then silence.

Then another flight. Louder. More of them. More wild shifts.

Those of us who saw Hitchcock’s movie remember how eerie flights of birds can be. Especially since Hitchcock used no music in his movie only the sounds in the birds as emlated on Oskar Sala‘s mixtrautonium. Those sounds I heard at dawn that day were almost the same as Tippi Hedren heard.