Thousands of birds are descending upon US and Australian suburbs in what looks like a scene out of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Birds.
In a video posted to TikTok, corellas, a type of white cockatoo, can be seen flooding a street in the southern NSW suburb of Nowra.
Some are perched on power lines while others crowd roofs, lawns, roads and the tops of cars.
Locals told 9News the flock of corellas, which are native to the area, gather on the street every single day.
The birds are known to be destructive with a tendency for mischief, damaging nearby shop fronts and leaving excessive amounts of droppings.
Gisella Kaplan, a professor of animal behaviour at the University of New England told ABC News in 2019 that corellas, originally an inland bird, often flee less ideal areas and move in large numbers, forming the swarm seen in Nowra.
"Corellas prefer to move in small flocks of 20 or 30, but what we have seen in the last [few] years in Western Australia and South Australia and occasionally in Sydney, is huge flocks of thousands, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their numbers have increased," she said.
"It can mean that they have all fled from somewhere and flocked together ... In most cases, it happens when there is a dire shortage of food and water or the heat gets so bad they have to flee the inland."
In the US birds have been even more invasive to the suburbs.
A family in the coastal Los Angeles suburb of Torrance had a swarm of birds enter their house through the chimney while they were out for dinner, reports local news channel KTLA5.
Kerri said she lost count of how many birds were inside her home after reaching 800.
The family spent a night in a hotel while a relative tried to rid the house of birds that were flying "everywhere".
On the second night of the invasion, Kerri woke up to a bird "flapping" in her room
"The second night I actually woke up to a bird flapping in my room. So basically just pulled the covers over my head and started screaming," she told KTLA.
The home was also flooded with bird poop.
"You couldn't walk in any spot in the living room, the kitchen and the hallway without stepping on bird droppings," Kerri said.
In a nearby suburb, another family had the same issue, but luckily a guard placed over their fireplace kept the birds from taking over. (embed pic)
The birds are believed to be passing through Southern California as part of their migration north to find a new home.
