I was standing in the marshlands of Friesland in the Netherlands in February of 2020. Hundreds of thousands of starlings were swooping and diving in the sky above my head.
The wind patterns on the surface of the still water were created by the sound of their wings.
The transfixing scene was the culmination of three years of following European starlings.
An older woman who had been watching the birds for close to an hour was my only companion that night.
She turned to me with tears in her eyes and said that the birds were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
I had to agree with her.
After a 25-year international career spent photographing many of the world's most famous musicians and actors, I recently returned to the landscape of my childhood in southernDenmark to photograph a visual phenomenon I first witnessed as a boy.
The largest system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world is located in the northern part of the Wadden Sea.
The skies come to life with hundreds of thousands of starlings in the spring and autumn.
I extended my photographic investigation to include Rome, England, the Netherlands, Ireland and Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain.
Most scientists theorize that the behavior helps protect the birds from predator, though there is no single explanation for why starlings murmur. It is possible that murmurations can help the starlings keep warm in the evening. There is a phenomenon called the "dilution effect", in which moving in tandem lowers the risk for each individual bird.
I witnessed many dramatic performances when falcons or hawks attacked the starling flocks.
It is difficult to explain how the birds are able to move in such close proximity. Studies have found that each starling responds to six or seven of its nearest neighbors, a number that seems to maximize the balance between the effort of the individual and the group.
Scales-free behavioral correlation means that a change in the state of a single starling can affect the movement of schools of fish.
Classical landscape painting, calligraphy and Japanese woodblock prints were some of the art forms that inspired me to create this series of images. I was inspired by the birds.
A calligraphic brush stroke is a strong visual expression when starlings move as a single unified organisms. The lines and shapes emerge within the swarm, bringing to life physical abstractions and calling to mind the patterns formed by interfering waves.
The shapes of the starling murmurations range from meditative to dramatic as they perform a ballet, one with life-and-death consequences.
The flock seems to have the power of superfluids at times.
This is the moment I attempt to capture a fragment of eternity, from geometric to organic, from solid to fluid, from material to ethereal, from reality to a dream.
Søren Solk is a photographer. His most recent book features more than 100 photographs of starling murmurations. You can follow his work on social media.
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