A truly wonderful winter sunset here yesterday - and I managed to get up onto the Derbyshire moors to a huge starling roost, such a spectacular thing to witness.
We were high up on a moor by an old quarry, its quite an amazing location. There was a little crowd of people gathered towards the end of the afternoon, it was cold, sunny and so still - something very special to share with other like minded people. Really beautiful. The location is relatively well known locally amongst us wildlife lovers, and there's been some wonderful sharing of the murmeration formations, it does feel that more people are now making sure they take time to witness such special free spectacular natural wonders.
I adore watching starling roosts, you never quite know what might happen - they don't "perform" every night and roosts also shift, so there's no guarantee you'll see anything... which adds to the magic... You get there in time, you wait and you wait... and you wait a bit more...
As the sun got lower in the sky yesterday, we could spot the odd little group of about 20 starlings passing over... and as the sky got more and more orange-pink, then more and more starlings appeared in little groups. Would they hang around? Would they just pass over? Would they just go straight into the reeds to roost? More and more little groups of starlings appeared and flew over - we all anxiously craned our necks to see where the little groups of birds were going... The little crowd of people fell silent - that in itself was really special, as if everyone was holding their breath, waiting and hoping...
And sure enough, the starlings did their thing... Gradually the small groups of birds joined together, some had disappeared over the hillside and then reappeared as a huge group... Soon, there were several large groups swirling and twisting in the sky, very long formations twisting over each other... The clouds were amazing too... And it is really hard to capture the atmosphere in photographs or film, I got some nice images, but it really is one of those "you had to be there" events...
After a really wonderful aerial show by the starlings, they slowly grouped into tighter and tighter balls as if coming to their finale - and then, all of a sudden, they dived into the reed bed to roost...
"Isn't nature amazing" said the woman next to me, really quietly, because none of us was quite ready to speak yet...
She's right, nature is amazing...