We left Caerlaverock and headed for Gretna to try and watch the amazing "murmurations" that take place there. My beloved and I had caught view of one when passing Gretna services 2 years ago and the short view we got far outdid most of the pictures I had seen but could not stop on a dual carriageway. When John A suggested going I, tied in with a trip to see the Barnies I was up for it. So we both researched where to go and I had printed off maps, stuck post its on, plotted my Sat Nav and everything was in the hands of Navigator John when we left Caerlaverock. There actually was only one problem when we guided ourselves beautifully into the correct spot with at least 8 other cars with people out watching, the problem was that the bloody Starlings hadnt been reading the same thing on the Internet that we had and were at least a copse too far for any decent photography so we basically watched from the second we had arrived as the Starlings had just started to appear for the next 25 minutes. There were several flocks coming in and some of them converged forming a massive flock although some seemed to just drift around with the odd Billy No Mates standing out as it flew in late and looked for a flock to join. It was spectacular and the various people that were there said we were directly over the spot where they had been showing for the last few nights but it was purely pot luck as sometimes they stayed for a few days but did tend to move a copse or two in any direction.
As you can see from below I did take a few pics but it was very dark so I have had to overexpose a fair bit in post photo production (a technical term used by me and experts alike, which means moving a couple of sliders left and right until it looks better) and as Alan F would say "it will sharpen up in photoshop", unfortunately I dont own Photoshop. Whilst we were up watching the Barnies at Caerlaverock someone showed us a picture he purported to have taken of the roost last year which looked more like a chaffinch than some of my early pictures and when John and I walked away John said he was waiting for me to add on to my compliment of "Great Pic" "did it take long to do in Photoshop?"
All I can say is go and see it if you havent already been, if you have go again, cos I certainly will
5 comments:
Used to see this (and far more) every evening throughout the winter in the middle of Newcastle . . . but that was years ago before the Starling population crashed.
Very old reports (1970s) used to put the Newcastle roost at ~250,000. Now, there's maybe a few dozen.
Just what we were saying in the car John, about the Starlings in the town.
My images were OK but did not capture what we saw, didn't do them justice.
John,
my pics werent much too good either but the best (if you can call them the best) were the ones I took at 200mm. I suppose that gives us another excuse to go back again :)
John
Is that a hint ?
Hi John if you are going back to the Solway a trip to Mereshead would be worth looking into
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