“Come to the beach—NOW!”

I scan the urgent texts from neighbors and naturalists and bolt out the door. Racing over the dunes, I hear a cacophony of squawks, bleats and cries. Then I see the birds—thousands swirling in great swooping waves, wing to wing, their dark feathers blotting the sun, their sleek bodies wheeling over the sea.

“It looks like something out of Hitchcock,”  an onlooker says.

In fact, a scene like this one occurred not far from the director’s house on the Central Coast a few months before he started shooting The Birds.  On August 18, 1961, masses of crazed birds invaded the town of Capitola, colliding into buildings and smashing onto cars.