These busy birds came straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.
While on his way to work, ecologist Jamie Kingscott had to wait for an unexpected natural event: thousands of starlings flying down the road ahead of him in Somerset, England.
“A result of living on the Somerset levels in winter,” Kingscott, 26, tweeted next to a photo of birds scattered across the sky as they fly. “Having to stop for several thousand starlings to cross the road.”
The tweet has accumulated more than 3,000 likes since Kingscott, who calls himself a conservationist on Twitter, posted it on Friday.
“I put it on Twitter and it went crazy,” the Secret World Wildlife Rescue wildlife coordinator told the BBC, adding that, although surprised by the virality of his tweet, he agrees that his photo of the moment is very special.
“There were several thousand of them. They were all over the place, ”he said. “They lend themselves to impressive photography. They look great for the camera. “
In addition, its special image is that it shows birds flying very low on the ground, a break with the usual flight patterns of starlings.
“They were really low, so less than the standard murmur, but they did a little flourish to show off, and they came right up to the hood … it was too much,” he said. “You can’t help but be a little impressed.”
Unlike the violent birds in Hitchcock’s 1963 horror film “The Birds”, starring Tippi Hedren, Kingscott says he was honored that the birds made a “special effort” to see him “on my way to work, it was very kind of them “.
He almost failed to capture the moment for posterity.
“They crossed the road in front of me and then turned and crossed back, so I just stopped the car and watched,” he said of the only shot he posted.
A photographer in Mullingar, Ireland, also recently captured an incredible bird moment when a flock of starlings appeared before him and together they formed the shape of a giant bird.