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Wildlife and photography enthusiast Alan Price makes the most of his local access to capture stunning starling murmurations
Wildlife enthusiast Alan Price makes the most of his local access to photograph stunning starling murmurations
Wildlife and photography are my passion and I am so fortunate to live and work in Pentrefelin, Wales. It’s such an outstanding part of the UK. Since I was a child, nature and wildlife was very important to me and, in particular, birds and insects. Photography played a large part when I reached adulthood, because I worked as a graphic designer for 40 years. After I retired, 10 years ago, I entered a photo competition and won a Nikon D40X. After upgrading my kit a few times I won several national and international awards, which spurred me on.
In 2014, I moved into a beautiful old mill house in North Wales. There was local knowledge of huge flocks of starlings which gathered each evening from November to March to roost in local reed beds a mile from my home. Since then I have taken hundreds of images of this spectacular event and each visit delivers something new.
At times the starlings will gather and roost for short periods in trees before roosting properly for the night in the reed beds. One evening in the middle of November last year I knew they would display this behaviour, so waited patiently before capturing them in front of a hill range [1].
As the evenings get longer, during March, the displays take on a more graphic appearance and fantastic shapes
The hills in the background gave an extra dimension to the composition and I was happy with the final shot. It has to be remembered that you only have a window of around 30 minutes from when the starlings first arrive, display, and then finally roost, so compositional options were limited.
As the evenings get longer, during March, the displays take on a more graphic appearance and fantastic shapes are formed that shift and change every few minutes. I am thankful that living so close to the reed beds has given me the luxury of witnessing all the many changes that take place.
With this in mind I knew that during March I would encounter many different murmuration displays set against beautiful sunset skies. I managed to capture one image that looked like a bird in flight despite it lasting only 30 seconds [2]. My Nikon 70- 300mm lens zoomed smoothly and quickly locked focus without any problem.
Sunsets over the coastal reed beds add a beautiful backdrop to the crisp, black, silhouetted displays. And one particular evening I was lucky enough to be presented with two murmuration displays side by side [3]. Although they came into view for just a very short time, the results were amazing, bathing the entire frame in a golden orange, speckled with hundreds and hundreds of flocking birds.