This might be one of the coolest bird things I've ever seen.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/leisure-recreation/you-get-one-split-second-the-story-behind-a-viral-bird-photo/1744997

Oh wow, talk about perfect timing with that last photo!!   I've heard of starling murmurations, but have never actually witnessed one myself. 

@fantasia

To my knowledge we don’t have murmurations. I have never seen such large groups of starlings here in Michigan, although they are very abundant here.   Some people consider them a threat to the native wildlife (especially to the bluebird population).  They have been known to invade bluebird nesting boxes and lay their own eggs in them. I don’t particularly like starlings for understandable reasons, but the large gathering of them could be a spectacle. 

Here is some more information about starlings in Michigan:

https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=starlings%20in%20michigan&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5

The song thrush is a bird found in Britain and Europe which is much like our American wood thrush:

I have never seen one, but I wonder if anyone here has watched this bird. Its song is quite different from the wood thrush (which sounds a flute), but its appearance is quite similar.  Their resemblance is amazing!  Both birds are forest inhabitants, and both have very lovely songs! 🙂

Here is a wood thrush video for comparison:

I have seen and heard the wood thrush quite often here in Michigan forests during the month of May. What a beautiful flutelike song the bird has!  🙂

@narnian78 I have seen and heard song thrushes in the UK, and also mistle thrushes, which are slightly bigger and greyer. Where I used to live in Kent, there was a pair of mistle thrushes that used to nest each year in an old pine tree that I could see from my window, and I enjoyed watching them come and go. I named them Spicks and Specks (after the Bee Gees song)!  

The American wood thrush does have a beautiful song! A bit more tuneful than the British thrushes. British blackbirds are in the thrush family too, and have a lovely song.

I'm still in Australia until tonight (Thursday, as it is here) and have been enjoying hearing familiar bird songs and calls here, especially the Australian magpies. They are quite different from northern hemisphere magpies (not closely related at all — it was just British colonials seeing a black and white bird and being very unimaginative ) and they sing beautifully too. 

@courtenay 

I am glad that you were able to see and hear the song thrush. I always wondered what they were like to observe in the area where you live.  Probably the song thrush is the same bird that Tolkien refers to in The Hobbit since it eat snails and lives in the woodlands of the UK.  The American Robin and Eastern Bluebird are also thrushes found here in the US, and they stay here in Michigan all winter.

Posted by: @narnian78

Probably the song thrush is the same bird that Tolkien refers to in The Hobbit since it eat snails and lives in the woodlands of the UK.

Yes, it is. I don't know anyone who can understand their language, though. Or the ravens, for that matter.