The latest show drawing crowds downtown isn't a concert or play. Its thousands of tiny birds who take to the sky near sunset on a schedule you to can set your watch by.
Dozens of people turn out near the Jacksonville Landing to see something that bird lovers say is very rare: purple martins swooping down and around, then roosting in trees along Hogan Road, only a block from the St. Johns River.
"They were swarming around. It was crazy," said Neeraja Chandrasekharan, who came out with her family to see the spectacle. "How they would compress and then decompress, just naturally, just like they knew they were on the same page, (like) they're all connected somehow."
David Foster, of Duval Audubon Society, called the opportunity to see these birds "a big deal." He said the birds spend the day feeding and then in trees downtown at night to rest and keep away from predators.
"There are anywhere from 20 to 30,000 martins at their peak," Foster said.
Foster said purple martins were known to roost in Hemming Park in the 1940s, but they didn't come back after the trees there were cut down. Until this year.
"The roost was first discovered about the 18th of June, and there've been people here every night since then," Foster said.
It's not clear why the birds picked the trees between the Landing and the Times-Union Center, although they do like to be near water.
Foster said the birds will not stay much longer as they are expected to migrate to Brazil later this summer.