starlings on Otmoor

www.keepturningleft.co.uk for more bird films. The starlings are an astonishing thing to see - Near Oxford - England. This was filmed at an RSPB reserve called Otmoor. It is the most remarkable thing I have ever seen - and as a video camerman I have seen some pretty amazing things.

The music is from a companny called CSS Music. The track is "soaring with the sun" - .

I have just received this

Hi, Dylan. I got your contact information from your beautiful YouTube video published in February 2007.

Audubon Magazine published a wonderful article about starling flock behavior earlier this year: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/featur...
.
My favorite segment from the article:

Like drivers on a freeway, starlings dont appear to mind having neighbors nearby on their sides—or above and below, for that matter—as long as they have open space ahead. That makes sense, since the presence of a clear path in the direction of travel minimizes the likelihood of collisions should the birds need to shift their course abruptly, as is likely when a falcon attacks. But whats really nifty about this spatial asymmetry is that the researchers have been able to use it to calculate the number of neighbors to which each starling pays close attention—a quantified elaboration of Pottss chorus line idea. By looking at correlations between the movements of neighboring starlings, they can show that each bird always pays attention to the same number of neighbors, whether theyre closer or farther away. How many neighbors is that? Six or seven, says Cavagna, who points out that starlings in flocks can almost always see many more nearby birds— but the number may be closely tied to birds cognitive ability.

The direction of the flock can be coordinated by each birds tracking six or seven other birds. Remarkable. This is a very different kind of cognitive skill.

if you want to know more about the science try this

http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/m...

Dylan

• Category

  Pets & Animals

[Eltsuist]

Dawkins send me here!

[carolinedexter]

Thanks so much! Amazing sight. They do this in the fields surrounding my house too and it's captivating.

[aodhfinn]

great work ............more of it .

[moon doggie]

Wow so many birds

[Ivin3690]

shut.the.fuck.up. (Earth)

[hoghash78]

I sent me here.

[chez herrick]

thank you for sharing an amazing sight i might have never seen. what a treat!

[Mohammed Aarab]

"Glorified is He by the heavens, the seven, and the earth and all what is in them. And there is nothing which does not glorify Him with praise but you do not understand their glorification. He is All-Forbearing, Ever-Forgiving." (Quran)

[1TheLoneWolf1]

You don't need a god to explain how birds fly in formations like this. Indeed, it was Richard Dawkins who sent me here.

'These starlings’ remarkable aerobatic ballet results from each bird within the flock following a relatively simple set of rules.

The birds’ wonderfully complex flight patterns emerge from the cumulative, simple actions of the individual birds, in a similar way to water’s wetness and turbulence emerging from the relatively simple interactions of individual water particles.'

[william mellor]

to gideon

[Josiah Schickler]

And people say god doesn't exist.