The birds

Stopped in Pukekohe for some dinner in the way home. The trees were filled with hundreds and hundreds of birds in the trees. It sounded like we were in Hitchcock's movie. #pukekohe #aucklandnz #evening #birds

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Sep 16, 2017 at 12:29am PDT

There are a lot of different slice-of-life things that people don’t share on social media. This may come as a surprise to those who think that social media is just for sharing photos of one’s lunch, or oneself. Nevertheless, it’s true, and the very short video above is an example of this.

We were on our way home from visiting family and decided to stop at have something to eat. As we drove in town, we could hear a large noise outside through the closed car windows. It was birds—many, many birds. When we parked and got out the noise was even louder—the video doesn’t really di it justice. I said something like, “where’s Tippi Hedren?”, but I realised that the remark ages me because the reference these days would be a bit obscure. So, I changed it for the Instagram caption to the simpler, “It sounded like we were in Hitchcock's movie,” which was, of course, The Birds (1963).

After a quick dinner, the birds were still at it, but starting to quieten down as the light faded. We just went home to very pleased furbabies.

This particular incident isn’t important, or even unique, but it’s nevertheless an example of an everyday sort of incident that I may not have mentioned normally. But once I shot the video to capture the sound, really, and then shared it to Facebook, it instantly became more shareable here, too. That, too, isn’t unique: I share some ordinary events on social media, then end up sharing them here, too, and talking more about what led to the sharing in the first place, among other things. It sort of closes the circle, I think.

It turns out, though, that this was not the first video I’ve shared on Instagram. The first was way back in January when I took my car for a carwash. That was an even more ordinary event.

At any rate, today’s video was the sort of slice-of-life thing that I don’t often share on social media. It’s just that this time, I did.