Watch thousands of starlings perform an 'incredible ballet of life and death' in new murmuration footage

Breathtaking new stills and footage capture the beauty and acrobatic skills of tens of thousands of starlings as they swarm and sweep across dusk skies in Europe. The mesmerizing shots were taken by Danish photographer Søren Solkær, who has followed the majestic birds for six years across Europe.

Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) flock to form what are known as murmurations, named after the noise their thousands of flapping wings make during these events. Starling murmurations can contain more than a million birds, all swooping in unison to create evocative shapes in the sky.

In his ninth photographic monograph, titled "Starling" (Edition Circle, 2023), Solkær showcases this "incredible ballet" in a series of images taken during and after sunsets in Europe. "Starling" is Solkær's second published exploration of murmurations after "Black Sun" released in 2021. (A starling murmuration is known as "black sun" in Danish.) In addition to photographs of starling-filled skies, the new book features close-up images of starling feathers under light and electron microscopy. 

"The graphic and organic shapes of the starling murmurations range from meditative to highly dramatic as they perform their incredible ballet of life and death," Solkær said in a statement shared with Live Science.

Starlings are migratory birds that sport black feathers with a purply-green sheen and speckled with white in the winter. Come autumn, they leave their breeding grounds in Northern Europe and fly to milder regions around the Mediterranean and as far as the Middle East.

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Starling murmurations remain somewhat Mysterious to Science, but research has begun to untangle these complex collective displays. A 2017 study found that starlings often gathered in swarms when predatory birds, such as sparrowhawks (Accipiter nisus), were nearby. The presence of predators triggered larger murmurations that lasted for longer, indicating that the flocking behavior may have evolved as a defense strategy, according to the study.