As I mentioned in my previous posts I have been looking at the wonderful descriptions of the Starling Murmurations written by Edmund Selous. I have been trying to find a way of bringing his words alive and would now like to share my new work with you. I have created murmurations that contain quotes from Selous' work and then used the letters, instead of images of birds to create murmurations - in some way I hope that I have brought his work to life for you.
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I mentioned in my last post that I had been looking at the Murmuration on the Somerset Levels and I thought I would share a little bit of the film footage that I took on 4th January 2015. The film is just taken on a digital camera so it is in no way professional but it gives a good indication of the numbers of starlings that we around that morning.
Following that morning I have spent many hours researching how and why the starlings form murmurations and it still seems to be a mystery to most people but during my research I became aware of the ornithologist Edmund Selous and his book 'Thought Transference (or What?) in Birds. Selous believed that the starlings used a kind of telepathy to transmit their movements to each other and thus avoid crashes. It helps, I think, to bear in mind that Selous wrote this book in 1931 so it falls short of scientific fact and his musings make quite a read. However, Selous spent many hours watching the birds and his book 'Bird Life Glimpses' contains descriptions that are quite breathtaking and, for me create vivid mental images;
"The brown speeding cloud that they make, whirling aloft and flashing into various sombre lights against the darkening sky, has a fine stormy effect. It would make the name of any landscape painter, could he put on canvas the stir and spirit of these living storms and clouds that fill, each morning and evening, a vast part of the heavens with their hurrying armies."
Edmund Selous (1901) |
Andrea OkeArtist specialising in drawing and printmaking ArchivesCategories |