Tag: nature

We found a Murmuration!

We found a Murmuration!

My challenge to myself in February, was to get better photographs of Birds in flight. I have to say, that what I have taken since the beginning of the year has been some of my best bird photos ever. This is partially due to time, but also but techniques and understanding of my latest camera.

One of my side challenges was to try and capture a murmuration with my Son. He’s just getting into photography, using my old kit and has enjoyed the garden birds, but like me, wanted to see a murmuration.

We partially achieved are our goal, and while it wasn’t a massive murmuration and it disappeared behind the trees, we did see it and the build up to it.

There is a bit of a background story here though. We had been out many times looking for one and never found one. People kept telling us about them and saying, did you see it, but we were always looking somewhere else. One evening, while looking for it, we were told of a Barn Owl. So the next night went looking to that, after about an hour, I saw Starlings in the distance, about 500m away.

So we abandoned our Barn Owl search and ran. I could just see them above the tree tops.

On reaching the field, we were given an amazing low level display with birds, landing and taking up, swooping back down and repeat, all the time being nicely back lit.

The display was pretty impressive.

After more swooping, diving, and flying around the field

They headed to another field and took off to really start the murmuration just out of our view.

The next night we were back on the search for the Barn Owl, but we had to wait another 2 nights and several hours of waiting before we were rewarded.