Playing creative started new game in a large biome map started seeing sprites of the torch flame animation firing about rapidly only after I placed torches. sprites only appear to the northeast and flash very rapidly, occurs in both day and night, originally seen in taiga but moved to swampland and was able to recreate same effect but at lower rate i believe due to smaller number of torches used there. More torches= more flashing sprites. Tested in old Survival map and could not recreate but tested in a new survival map (regular biomes) same effect was noticed in the same compass direction. Managed to grab a screenshot from where i originally saw this happen. You also must be relatively near the torches to see this.