Last month, I posted some images of our local starling murmuration. I popped back three times last week and was delighted to find them still there, doing their thing, only in greater numbers. Yesterday was the best yet as the sunset kindly provided a colourful backdrop.
We were lucky, during our trip to Western Australia last month, to meet some dolphins. 
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Focused Moments is on hiatus while I am travelling Down Under. In the meantime, I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Nature’s baubles
Today, I want to share a very special experience. Last week I had the pleasure of witnessing one of nature’s great Autumn spectacles, a murmuration of starlings. During Autumn and Winter, starlings flock together at twilight, performing amazing aerial ballets that attract more birds to the group until they descend, all together in a moment, to their roost for the night.
It starts with just a small group, circling in the sky in a way that seems to attract others.
Soon many more have joined, and fantastic shapes are created as they bank and wheel about.
This was a very small murmuration, with numbers in the low hundreds. Flocks in the thousands are seen at certain key locations in Britain at this time of year. Sadly, however, starling numbers nationally have fallen by 70% in recent years and they are now counted as a threatened species. For more information, see the RSPB’s website.
I feel very privileged to have seen this waning, natural wonder.
f/11, 2″, ISO 50, 24mm, 0.6 ND Grad and 0.9 Pro Glass
I have had a wonderful week of photography, with two full days out in the field with fellow enthusiasts, Jenifer Bunnett and Tony Antoniou. Conditions were perfect, with mist and patchy sun. On both occasions I visited Boldermere, a peaceful lake incongruously nestled in the crook of the M25’s junction with the A3. Each day was rounded off perfectly with one of nature’s most spectacular Autumn displays, a murmuration of starlings. Those shots will follow in another post soon. For now, a gentle panorama of this quiet, forgotten spot.
I have been outside all week, and am consequently very behind with visiting blogs. I will try to catch up soon, before we head off on our next big adventure, Down Under!
Jen and I enjoyed a wonderful shoot on Chatley Heath yesterday. For a short while, the sun burned through the early mist to cast its rays across the landscape. Chatley Heath is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest and it is managed as a nature reserve by Surrey Wildlife Trust, a favourite charity of mine.
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
-Herman Hesse,Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte.
f2.8, 1/640, ISO 100, 100mm
f.13, 1/80, ISO 400, 100mm
The Dragon-fly
Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.
-Tennyson
37mm, f7.1, 1/20, ISO800
27mm, f9, 1/9, ISO 800
31mm, f5.6, 1/13, ISO 800
100mm , f13, 1/200, ISO 800
This bizarre creature is a lace bug, probably stephanitis rhododendri, which is bad news for the rhododendrons and azaleas in my garden. Or it might be stephanitis takeyai, which is bad news for the pieris in my garden. So it is bad news for me as a gardener either way! I don’t know why it was posing in my sumac tree instead of one of its preferred meals, but I thought the colours worked rather nicely.
Focused Moments 