Photographer Sharon Hinckley caught these playful birds at La Jolla Cove on Feb. 18. “Some of them,” she said, “looked like they were at a hair salon (feather salon?) or doing yoga poses.” These birds were enjoying a tranquil afternoon, but researchers have recently discovered why things may not always be so peaceful. Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have uncovered new evidence supporting the theory behind the mystery of crazed birds that, back in 1961, inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s notorious thriller, “The Birds.” Hitchcock’s interest was piqued when he visited Monterey and, as reported in a local newspaper, thousands of “crazed seabirds pelted the shores of North Monterey Bay,” regurgitating anchovies.?Thirty years later, a similarly bizarre incident occurred in the same region. In the latter event, the birds were found to have ingested the neurotoxin domoic acid, but evidence to support the theory that the same substance caused the earlier incident couldn’t be found. In a letter published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the authors, including Mark Ohman of Scripps, showed that a toxin-producing species of phytoplankton was present in high numbers in Monterey Bay in the 1960s. Using archived samples of plankton collected during ship surveys 50 years ago, the team found elevated levels of the toxin in the samples, leading them to conclude that “domoic acid-producing phytoplankton have been an agent of marine animal mortality in the California current system for at least the past 50 years.” — Kendra Hartmann