I sat with a farm family a few weeks ago for the noonday meal. The scene outside the kitchen window was typical of rural eastern North Carolina. There were open fields where this particular farmer grew corn. Leftover husks lay where he had broken the land for spring planting.

While we were eating, one family member called our attention to a flock of birds that had landed in the field out back. We all turned to look, and the area was covered with blackbirds. "I'll bet there are five thousand birds out there," the farmer remarked, and then he added, "They could strip a crop of corn in three minutes flat."

His wife confessed her fear of birds, which led some other members of the family to confess their fear, not of the birds, but of what could happen when a flock invades a field. That brief…