Old video of swarm of blackbirds outside Texas supermarket viral as Saudi Arabia

Around May 27, several users on Twitter and Facebook posted a two-minute video of hundreds of crows in a huge parking lot. As per the claim, the video is from a supermarket in Saudi Arabia.

The text associated with the viral video reads, “Crows not allowing customers to come out of super market in Saudi .. is it the beginning of the end of the world ??” Alt News received several requests to fact-check this on WhatsApp (+917600011160) and on our official Android application.

Below is a tweet by Roop Darak HINDU (@iRupND) who posted the viral video along with the same claim.

Crows not allowing customers to come out of super market in Saudi ..
is it the beginning of the end of the world ??🙄 pic.twitter.com/5NKy0bXSqR

— Roop Darak HINDU (@iRupND) May 28, 2020

Fact-check

Alt News performed a keyword search on YouTube and found that the viral video was uploaded by a verified YouTube account ViralHog on April 18.

As per the video description, this event occurred outside H-mart on December 6, 2016, in Carrollton, Texas, USA.

In order to verify the location, we searched for Carrollton H-Mart on Google street view and found several similarities which have been marked in the screenshot below. Most importantly, the mall in the viral video has the same serial number as the store on Google street view (highlighted in red).

Earlier this year in February, 6abc and The Daily Mail reported a similar incident took place in Fort Worth suburb Burleson in Texas on January 24. This particular behaviour of birds flying together in a large group is known as a murmuration. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as, “a large group of birds, usually starlings, that all fly together and change direction together, or the act of birds doing this”.

Thus the social media claim that the video was shot outside a supermarket in Saudi Arabia is false. The incident happened in Texas, USA.