Anomaly anyone?

nn1103 Earl Plato
An anomaly in the movies? I heard the word how many times while watching Matrix Reloaded recently. “Anomaly?” Anomalies in nature? I guess so. We have seen the “Witch’s Brooms” at Marcy Woods and in the Thunder Bay community outside Ridgeway. A virus had attacked coniferous trees such as hemlock and pine. The trees’ attempts to fight this virus incursion results in dense growths at the end of branches, hence the name, “Witch’s Broom.” The name fits the shape. There are other anomalies in nature.
C’mon Plato, what’s an anomaly in nature? It’s a deviation from the ordinary, from what’s the rule that you observe in the great outdoors. You can call it an abnormality and I apply it also to strange behaviour in animals.
The following anomaly in nature comes from Teale’s writings while he rambled in his woods one day.
“However, if the woodchucks fail to contribute to the interest of my walk, the house sparrows do provide a time of diversion at its end. When I started out nearly half a hundred were feeding with other small birds on seed scattered on the snow. When I come back I see them again. Now they are collected in the far corner of the yard close to a bluebird box that has been left on the fence post throughout the winter. Like tree swallows on telephone wires during the autumn migration, they are ranged side by side In dense rows along the barbed wires of the nearby fence. All are chirping in great excitement.” Here’s the anomaly.
“One after the other, little groups of four or five flutter up to the box. They hover at the round entrance hole or alight on the box. Then another band rises and takes their place, repeating the puzzling performance. None of the house sparrows, so far as I can see, enter the hole. After all the birds have flown away, I examine the box carefully. There is nothing inside that has caused the excitement!” I’d say this is an anomaly, a deviation from normal house sparrow behaviour.
Teale thought about it. Perhaps the sparrows had engaged in some mass response to an early mating and nesting urge. Training? As one who has had to lower his two Purple martin houses on the farm each spring and dig out the House sparrows’ nests before the Martins’ return, I know the tenacity of those (English) House sparrows.
What Teale saw was etched in his mind. It was not normal sparrow activities as far as he knew.
Know any more anomalies in nature?