Though it conjures the image of a rather unimaginative hive mind of drone-like workers, blindly following each other about, without a plan, let alone any sense of a grander purpose or wider strategy— albeit doing so in a fashion yielding strangely beautiful, alien, but ultimately meaningless shapes — those in such a murmuration — each one we may call a “starling” — should not complain, seeing as the metaphor was their idea in the first place.
