On August 18, 1961, thousands of seabirds crashed into Capitola, littering streets, disrupting power lines, and, in some cases, biting residents. Director Alfred Hitchcock, who owned a home in the area and had already written a script based on a Daphne du Maurier story about avian invaders, caught wind of the incident and requested that copies of the local newspaper be sent to him in Hollywood. Two years later he released The Birds.
http://www.viamagazine.com/top_stories/articles/capitola07.asp