So my wife was driving home from work monday evening (Sacramento county, CA) and witnessed what turned out to be a massive congregation of European Starlings filling the sky! We returned to the spot ( in the area of 8801 Jackson road, the parking is not good!) last evening and the birds reappeared along with several accitipers and a Peregrine Falcon! The hawks followed the starlings down into the pits where we presume they are roosting. The Peregrine chased the Starlings for about 10 minutes without success!
Way too many birds for me to count, 10’s of thousands of birds. This event was similar but not as impressive as the Tree Swallow roosting in the Tracy, CA area in 2008 where the estimate was 1 million plus birds!
I, of course photographed the spectacle as best I could, including some opportunities at the Peregrine in amongst the Starlings. Below is a link the a gallery of the images.
Way cool stuff Dan. I like the wider ones best. Bummer about those tall poles. A former student of mine, Manuel Presti has done quite well with a fabulous and similar series. Scroll down here to see how well he has done with images of the same subjects: http://www.wildlifephoto-presti.com/publications.htm
He has also won more than a few awards with images that he made while he was with me in Bosque (twice, I think...)
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Starling congregation behavior + a Peregrine
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