Murmuration

In the colder months, starlings mass over the flat pastoral landscapes off the highway in Ngambri/New South Wales, Australia. These passerine birds, from the family Sturnidae, behave at such a spectacular and sophisticated level of cohesion that speculation from the layman and the scientist alike have drawn no definitive mechanistic conclusion. In one recent study based on a computer model called StarDisplay, scientists tested three rules in unison – separation, attraction, and alignment (aerodynamic behavior, movement above a sleeping site and the low fixed number of interaction neighbors respectively). StarDisplay pinpointed patterns that resembled high-speed video recordings of murmurations taken in Rome, suggesting that these swarming birds may coordinate based on a set of known rules rather than heeding to a singular captain as guidance.  

Nearing Goulburn,this murmuration briefly kept pace with the car before veering off into the dark fields. My camera, set to compensate for low light, documented both bird flight and my own transit.