Sophie Windsor Clive:

A chance encounter and shared moment with one of nature's greatest and most fleeting phenomena.

Michiru Hoshino:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

From the archive:

Three-dimensional mapping of starling flocks could shed light not only on the birds' collective behavior but also on a broad range of other aggregate systems.

Freeman Dyson:

I happen to be a frog, but many of my best friends are birds.

Jonathan Franzen in The New Yorker:

Masafuera, in the South Pacific, five hundred miles off the coast of central Chile, is a forbiddingly vertical volcanic island, seven miles long and four miles wide, that is populated by millions of seabirds and thousands of fur seals but is devoid of people, except in the warmer months, when a handful of fishermen come out to catch lobsters.

Murmuration

For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.

Suddenly last fall, Irhabi 007 disappeared from the message boards. The postings ended after Scotland Yard arrested a 22-year-old West Londoner, Younis Tsouli, suspected of participating in an alleged bomb plot. In November, British authorities brought a range of charges against him related to that plot. Only later, according to our sources familiar with the British probe, was Tsouli's other suspected identity revealed. British investigators eventually confirmed to us that they believe he is Irhabi 007.

Terrorist 007, Exposed