This story happened near Ciudad Guzman, Mexico. It was about noon on a calm, sunny day in late February, the height of the dry season. Fine powder dust lay inches thick everywhere. Before me was a large, flat corn stubble field; not unusual in Mexico. But what was unusual was a huge cloud of dust that was rising and moving across the field with apparently nothing generating it.
I scanned the cloud with my binoculars thinking that it was some sort of strange, disorganized dust devil. Then I noticed yellow, white and black feathered bodies in the “dust”. Yellow-headed Blackbirds! Tens of thousands of them, swirling, landing, foraging and then rising en masse. The roar of their wings was like a waterfall! It was a dust storm of birds with rainbow colors.