The Falcon and the Murmuration: Nature’s Aerial Battle Above Rome

Last Novem­ber we post­ed a beau­ti­ful video of a shape-shift­ing flock of star­lings, known as a mur­mu­ra­tion, mak­ing pat­terns in the Irish sky. Today we bring you a sim­i­lar­ly beau­ti­ful film, but with an added ele­ment of dra­ma. In a scene from the BBC series “Earth­flight,” nar­rat­ed by David Ten­nant, one of nature’s most fear­some aer­i­al preda­tors, the pere­grine fal­con, swoops down into a dense cloud of birds for what promis­es to be an all-you-can-eat star­ling buf­fet. The out­come may sur­prise you. The aston­ish­ing footage was shot in Rome, where mil­lions of the birds flock every win­ter. For more on the spec­ta­cle of star­lings over Rome, be sure to see the 2007 New York Times audio-visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing pho­tographs by Richard Barnes, and the accom­pa­ny­ing essay by Jonathan Rosen.

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via: 3 Quarks Dai­ly