This umm.... paper? explains an organized way of handling character animations. The paper proposes 3 layers for moving a character. One of them is the action layer (Turn on the radio), steering layer (move to radio, turn it on), and locomotion layer (actually walk each step).

The paper proceeds to describe several examples of actions for the middle layer (steering). This includes seeking, evasion, pursuit, wander... etc.

Most of these kinds of behaviors would be nice to have in flocks. It is nice to think of them as higher level steering for flock motions.

Again, this paper wasn't technical enough, but it looks that this kind of information is just informal in nature! I don't know!