Not With A Bang, But With A Murmur ..

What a day!

Started the day, by opening the bedroom blinds and finding a stunningly beautiful Sparrowhawk sat on the bird feeding station, resplendent in the early morning sun. Alas my camera was in the wrong room, with the wrong lens on it to get a photo (much to my brothers mirth, has he has a Sparrowhawk in the bag for our Big Garden Twitch Off. Never mind, I saw it, and it was simply stunning.

We closed the day, by popping back to Newport Wetlands, after a surprise Sunday lunch. We hoped to see a proper murmur of starlings, after a tip off last week, saying more should arrive into the country over the last few days.

It was just before sunset, and the flocks started gathering on the pylons there. Pretty quickly we estimated there were 500+ birds getting ready to roost. Eventually they all took off, and headed east towards the woodland area. All very spectacular. Got a few shots, today's blip in the bag, so I thought.

Oh no ... as we got back to the visitor centre, we realised our big flock, had joined up with others to make a super flock of thousands and thousands of birds.

We stood and watched them swirl around the darkening skies. I managed to get a few decent shots off, this being one of them!

A perfect birding day!