Multiple distant lights in sky; moving in quick bursts, in ENE direction, pretty close together, but on individually erratic paths.

Talking on phone to my father; sitting outside. Looking up at night sky. Stars. Airplane lights. Suddenly saw a light that looked like an airplane light, but moved in almost a "jump" to another nearby location. At first thought it was just change of flight direction of an airplane high-up, causing me to perceive it as a jump. But realized that I had not lost sight of the light for even a moment during this supposed "turn" and it did seem to jump. In other words, I didn't see an arc of movement as if the light had been an airplane executing a turn during which its headlights would be visible to me the entire time. The light seemed to jump just a few degrees in the sky.
I thought perhaps my old eyes were playing tricks on me, so blinked and focused on the light again. Then noticed that there were several other similar lights around it---maybe a total of 5-7 lights. They were all moving erratically, not in the smooth lines that you associate with aircraft flight. And if they had been aircraft, they were flying dangerously close to each other...especially given the speed with which they were executing those jumpy, erratic movements. They were all moving as a mass of jumpy lights in the general direction of ENE. They soon flew into a part of the sky that I couldn't see because of the tree canopy.