A minor murmuration...

After an early morning visit to B&Q to purchase more red paint, I finished off the walls which have now lost their pale patches and look pretty good. As a reward I decided to go to Fen Drayton Lakes this afternoon, to photograph the starling murmuration. My friend Simon had taken some wonderful images last week, and the RSPB blog had been reporting that, after a slight drop, numbers had increased again to over 6000 birds, thanks to an influx of starlings from the continent.

Pete accompanied me, and we arrived early so that we could take the dogs for a walk round beforehand. The site is part of an extensive complex of disused gravel pits in the Ouse Valley, and is clearly worthy of a much longer exploration. All looked promising - it was calm and mild, the sky was clear and the sun had just set in a blaze of orange and yellow. The car-park was crowded with people waiting for the promised spectacle.

Only, for some reason, most of the starlings didn't show up! There were a few hundred, certainly no more than a thousand, who formed into rather uniform groups, did a few turns round the reed bed, and then funnelled into it for the night, as shown in my image. Even though it was not what we had been hoping for, our visit was enjoyable - and I'll just have to try again next year, a bit earlier in the season perhaps!