A huge flock of black birds mysteriously descended on a Houston highway on January 19th, seemingly oblivious to the speeding cars, as a video of the scene showed them hitting the windshield. This has occurred before in Houston but now it appears to be happening more frequently. Is this a warning to Houston? Texas? Cars?

This latest real recreation of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was recorded by Jessica Rios on an unidentified Houston freeway – since Houston is covered with freeways, it could be anywhere. Traffic is backed up on the other side of the freeway – a common occurrence in Houston that could be related to the birds, rush hour or the weather, since the sky appears to be darkened with storm clouds. The birds look black, which means they could be blackbirds, crows, common grackles (very common in Houston) or some other bird made unidentifiable by the poor lighting.

Huge flocks of birds have been showing up regularly around Houston, with similar events reported in 2016 and 2015. Hannah Bailey, a bird expert at the Houston Zoo, explained after an incident in October 2016 that blackbirds gather in large groups to find food and keep warm and are key to keeping the Houston mosquito population down. However, that doesn’t explain why they were attacking cars last week.