In July of 2013 a Magpie died on our front street in Saskatoon and we witnessed what we believe is a Magpie death ritual. It lasted about 10 minutes as a large number of Magpies came down and seemed to express their grief over their lost comrade. Magpie rituals have been written about by Dr. Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado.
I've seen something like this in other species but not to this extent, though that might have been due to me not observing them long enough.
Elephants, IIRC, do something similar. And I’ve seen flocks of birds gather in the same place every evening. If the trees are gone, they perch on the power lines that replaced the trees. At some point they fly away for the night. But they seem to check in with each other before they do.
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