Still haunted by the memory of the son they lost to an accident years ago, Ted and Mary Hocken take up residence with their two young daughters on the remote, windswept reaches of a tiny East Coast island. The Hockens are determined to forget their painful past and spend a quiet, uneventful summer. But as immense flocks of birds begin massing around the island, it becomes clear that something is very wrong in this isolated, deceptively calm oasis. Before long, the sky is darkened by a hideous onslaught of the screeching, winged creatures. It's an assault unlike anything in the history of man or beast – or is it? For one old timer recalls a similar, horrific outbreak that gripped the West Coast decades ago...