One little known highlight of the UK's coastline is a beautiful aerial dance called a murmuration, which is performed by dunlins and some other waterbird species. Starlings also exhibit similar behaviour. However, for someone new to bird photography like myself, photographing murmurations turned out to be one of the more challenging aspects and this post gives a few tips that I've picked up along the way. Dunlins frequent the UK's coasts and estuaries in the winter months so a first question was which sites to visit, and when. Some online research helped here on the websites of the RSPB and Continue Reading
Wild Mersey: wildlife of the Mersey Estuary
Sometimes a title is just too good not to use and Wild Mersey was the name of a superb article by Chris Baines celebrating the return of wildlife to the Mersey Estuary. This appeared in SourceNW magazine in 2009 which highlighted some of the achievements of the Mersey Basin Campaign. The campaign began in 1985 and lasted for 25 years, bringing together industry, communities and government in a huge effort to clean up the Mersey. To give an idea of how bad things once were, P. D. Jones, in an article on the water quality and fisheries of the estuary, suggested that: Everyone living Continue Reading
Murmurations: dance of the dunlins
From nature documentaries such as the BBC’s Blue Planet, we know that some fish species swim in huge shimmering shoals to confuse or deter predators. Perhaps less well known, though, is that some birds such as dunlins do this too, in aerial displays called murmurations. In the UK, the autumnal and winter displays by starlings are the most common as birds gather in vast flocks near dusk, wheeling and soaring almost as one for a few minutes, before dropping down onto the roost. This behaviour can be seen in many towns and cities. However, some wading birds also exhibit this Continue Reading
