Let's flock around.

From Alfred’s journal

The starlings came through the field behind the elementary school this afternoon, four or five hundred of them, and I sat out the whole thing on the fence post rather than join. For years I thought that was a failure of nerve on my part. Then I watched them and saw that not one bird in that mass was leading it; each one was only watching the seven nearest and turning when they turned, and the shape that made over the field was something none of them had decided. Switch came by with half a walnut and asked what I was doing and I said, let's flock around, which he took as an invitation and I half meant as one. We stayed until the light went orange. I still do not know whether a bird in there is choosing anything, or whether the choosing is what the field does with four hundred birds in it.