No, you're not on drugs (or at least we should hope not, on a schoolnight)—you're just seeing the flight pattern of a traveling group of starlings. Recently, we've seen a lot of ways that nature is making a power-play in the design world—whether it's worm secretion making a debut in the medical industry or the hidden design in sand crystals, there's always something surprising about the make-up of the natural world around us.

Dennis Hlynsky has been bringing us footage of animals' transit paths since 2005, but the Internet has recently caught on to just how cool they are. What started with a Flip video recorder and an interest in the flight patterns of birds, has become beautiful compiled footage following the habits of avians aloft. Dennis Hlynsky has since upgraded to a much more detail-oriented camera and mastered his hand at editing with programs like After Effects to create his timelapse-esque films. The end result is not unlike this time-lapse video of 4.5 hours worth of airplanes flying into San Diego International. Check out a few of his films:

In contrast to contrails, the paths the animals create a calligraphic loops and curves, giving the videos a slightly edited feel (which we promise isn't the case). Hlynsky, a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, takes on other animals and objects as well: birds, ducks, ants, roosters, insects and even snow. Some may say the his bird videos are straight out of a "Donnie Darko" scene. Yeah, maybe. We see more "Family Circus" in it than anything:

You can check out more of his videos here.

Via Colossal