The Transfixing Beauty of Starling Murmurations

It was a late February night in 2020, and I used to be standing within the marshlands of Friesland, a northern province within the Netherlands. Above my head, a whole lot of hundreds of starlings had been swirling, swooping and diving in a dramatic vogue, blackening the sky.

The sound of their wings reverberated by means of the air, creating wind patterns on the floor of the nonetheless water.

The transfixing scene was the climax of three years I’d spent following European starlings alongside their migration routes throughout the continent.

My solely companion that night time was a stranger who’d additionally stopped to look at the birds — an elder girl who bore witness to the unbelievable spectacle for near half an hour.

After the birds had settled into the big reed beds, she turned to me with tears in her eyes. “That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” she mentioned.

I needed to agree together with her.

After a 25-year worldwide profession spent photographing many of the world’s most well-known musicians and actors, I not too long ago returned to the panorama of my childhood in southern Denmark to {photograph} a visible phenomenon I first witnessed as a boy.

I started by photographing the big starling murmurations that happen within the northern stretches of the Wadden Sea, a coastal wetland surroundings — the world’s largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and dust flats, based on its UNESCO World Heritage itemizing — that stretches from the northern coasts of the Netherlands and Germany to the marshlands of southern Denmark.

Here, every spring and autumn, the skies come to life with the swirling shows of a whole lot of hundreds of starlings — an occasion identified regionally as “sort bol,” or “black sun” — because the birds move by means of on their seasonal migrations.

Later, I prolonged the attain of my photographic investigation to incorporate Rome, England, the Netherlands, Ireland and Catalonia, a area in northeastern Spain.

There isn’t any single definitive rationalization for why starlings murmurate, although most scientists theorize that the conduct helps shield the birds from predators. (Another doable rationalization is that murmurations may help the starlings hold heat within the night by recruiting bigger roosts.) Moving in tandem as a single massive entity each confuses predators and lowers the chance for every particular person chook, a phenomenon known as the “dilution effect.”

Most of the dramatic performances I witnessed occurred when a number of falcons or hawks had been attacking the starling flocks.

What’s harder to elucidate, although, is how the birds are capable of transfer in such proximity, with their actions so tightly coordinated. Studies have discovered that every starling responds to 6 or seven of its nearest neighbors, a quantity that appears to optimize the stability between the cohesion of the group and the hassle of the person.

As is true with the motion of faculties of fish and swarms of midges, the motion of starlings reveals traits of what’s known as scale-free behavioral correlation, which means {that a} change within the state of a single starling can have an effect on — and be affected by — each different starling within the flock, regardless of the flock dimension.

In creating this collection of pictures, I used to be impressed by a quantity of different artwork kinds, together with classical panorama portray, calligraphy and Japanese woodblock prints. I used to be additionally impressed by the birds themselves.

When starlings transfer as a single unified organism and assert themselves in opposition to the sky, they create a powerful visible expression, like that of a calligraphic brush stroke. Lines and shapes emerge inside the swarm, bringing to life bodily abstractions and calling to thoughts the patterns shaped by interfering waves.

The graphic and natural shapes of the starling murmurations vary from meditative to extremely dramatic as they carry out a panoramic ballet, one with life-and-death penalties.

At occasions the flock appears to own the cohesive energy of superfluids, altering form in an countless flux.

From geometric to natural, from strong to fluid, from materials to ethereal, from actuality to a dream: This is the second I try to seize — a mere fragment of eternity.

Søren Solkær is a Danish photographer. His most up-to-date ebook, “Black Sun,” options greater than 100 images of starling murmurations. You can observe his work on Facebook and Instagram.