Murmuration not mussitation.

This is a pretty boring picture, for which I apologise. I legged it out of the office and had the chance for a couple of shots before the light buggered off and my fingers fell off with the cold.

However; it's my first ever photograph of a murmuration of Starlings - albeit a small one. I've seen them before in much larger numbers over the Somerset Levels but never pointed a lens.

Now then - the esteemed Richard Dawkins, as always, puts it so eloquently...

"What is remarkable about the starlings' behaviour is that, despite all appearances, there is no choreographer and, as far as we know, no leader. Each individual bird is just following local rules. The numbers of individual birds in these flocks can run into thousands, yet they almost literally never collide. That is just as well for, given the speed at which they fly, any such impact would severely injure them. Often the whole flock seems to behave as a single individual, wheeling and turning as one. It can look as though the separate flocks are moving through each other in opposite directions, maintaining their coherence intact as separate flocks. This makes it seem almost miraculous, but actually the flocks are at different distances from the camera and do not literally move through each other. It adds to the aesthetic pleasure that the edges of the flocks are so sharply defined. They don't peter off gradually, but come to an abrupt boundary. The density of the birds just inside the boundary is no less than in the middle of the flock, while it is zero outside the boundary."
Richard Dawkins, "The Greatest Show on Earth"

Who can beat THAT for poetry?