What started as the aggressive behavior of sea birds captured the attention of Alfred Hitchcock and inspired the cult-classic film “The Birds” has now been scientifically explained by University professor Sibel Bargu and her colleagues.
In the year’s first volume of the journal Nature Geoscience, Bargu published her findings linking a 1961 bird kill event in Monterey Bay to poisoned algae.
On July 18, 1961, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that thousands of migrating sea birds, called sooty shearwaters, were seen regurgitating anchovies and dying in the streets.
Hitchcock, who was visiting the area that summer, released “The Birds” two years later, after being inspired by the sooty shearwaters.
At the time of the bird kill, Hitchcock was already working on the movie. He based his film on the 1954 novel “The Birds” by Daphne Du Maurier, Bargu said.
“He had read the book and had already written the movie,” Bargu said. “He called the newspaper and wanted to get extra information to use ‘his new thriller he was filming. He took details from Monterey Bay that he ended up connected.”
Bargu and her colleagues used a catalog of invertebrates compiled by the University of California at San Diego, she said. The catalog had stores of plankton from Monterey Bay dating back to 1949.
“The zooplankton is basically a small, filter-feeding animal,” Bargu said. “It is like a trash can. Whatever is in the water, you will find in their movie.”
 
 
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Contact Paul Braun at [email protected]