Birds circling overhead
Birds circling overhead are most often riding thermals, columns of warm air that lift them without a wingbeat, and other soaring birds watch them to find the same lift. A circling bird is a signpost as much as a hunter.
What it may mean
Birds wheeling high overhead are seldom lost or waiting for something below. Hawks, vultures, gulls and pelicans ride thermals, columns of warm air rising off sun-heated ground, and they circle to stay inside the column while it carries them up, often without flapping. A circling bird is also a signpost. Other soaring birds spot it and slip over to ride the same updraft, as glider pilots learn to do; each fall, migrating broad-winged hawks rise in spirals of hundreds that birders call kettles. Good chances in daily life are often found that way, by noticing where someone else is rising without much effort, like a neighbor's thriving garden or a coworker's way with email. In the East, a 1903 encyclopedia reports, the fabled huma foretold a crown for the head it circled.
Depending on how you saw it
A single hawk circling the yard
A lone red-tail turning slow circles over a neighborhood is often climbing rather than hunting. When it has enough height it sets its wings and glides off in a straight line toward the next ridge or field. What are you gaining height for right now, and where will you glide once you have it?
A kettle of migrating hawks
In September, broad-winged hawks pour south by the thousands along ridges and coasts, spiraling up together in one thermal and then streaming out to the next. Watchers count them from hilltops. Which shared effort carries you farther than you could travel alone?
Vultures circling a field
People see vultures circling and assume something has died below, but turkey vultures also circle simply to stay aloft while they sniff the air. Many of their loops are over nothing at all. When have you been blamed for hovering near trouble you had nothing to do with?
Why it happens in nature
Soaring birds circle to stay inside thermals, rising columns of air warmed by sunlit ground, and the lift carries them upward with almost no flapping. Thermals are strongest on sunny days from late morning through afternoon, which is when circling birds are most common. Gulls, crows and other birds also circle over food, before settling into a roost, or while mobbing a predator.
What folk beliefs say
South India (Wilkes)
A 1903 encyclopedia says that in the East the bird called the huma was among the best omens, and that the head around or above which it circled would be crowned; Wilkes, writing on the south of India, described it as a fabulous bird whose shadow foretold a crown.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 649. View the page
To reflect on
Whose rise has shown you where the lift is in your own field?