A Murmuration?

Friday wasn't too bad a day. At home it was cloudy all morning but in the afternoon we visited RSPB Old Moor where we were lucky enough to have a few hours of sunshine. Overnight Friday into Saturday saw this November's lowest temperature so far with -0.8°C or 30.6°F.

It was cold enough to form a thin sheet of ice on the bird bath.

Over the last couple of weeks there have been reports of starling murmurations at RSPB Old Moor and we were hoping that they would perform their aerial antics on Friday as they roosted for the evening. After our afternoon walk around the reserve we hadn't spotted all that much of note to take any photographs of. As usual most of the birds were keeping nicely out of reach of our zoom lenses.

This robin was tempted onto a fence post with some carefully placed seed. It was a pity about the twig casting a shadow.

We stopped off by the kingfisher screen where by all accounts a kingfisher had been spotted only moments ago. My camera was at the ready but unsurprisingly the kingfisher didn't return.

I did, though, manage a decent photo of the branch specially positioned for the kingfisher. It was now late into the afternoon and the light was starting to fade and my camera was taking a few seconds before it was able to focus. As we were moving away from the kingfisher screen the starlings were starting to gather on one of the large electricity pylons which cross the reserve.

As it got darker more and more starlings kept arriving until at one stage the top two arms of the pylon were covered with starlings. It was also cold standing waiting for the starlings to do their thing. You'll have to watch the video of our visit to see what happened.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett