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A storm of starlings is raining down on the horizon, rising rapidly from the reeds and wetlands of southern Denmark. The cluster of birds resembles ink droplets on a parchment canvas, sprayed into the dark sky, where they all dive and spin together. The birds curl like waves on the shoreline, turning into abstract formations that loom over the marshes.
The phenomenon, known as the starling murmuration in English or “black sun” in Danish, lasts only minutes, or even seconds. But it left a lasting impression on Danish photographer Søren Solkær, who first witnessed the show when he was 10 years old.
“At the time, this was the craziest thing I’d ever seen,” Solkær recalled.
For the next 40 years, Solkær built a career as a portrait photographer, traveling the world to capture iconic photographs of the world’s biggest rock stars, including Amy Winehouse, Metallica, Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin. But during a retrospective of his career in 2017, Solkær was inspired to try something new.
“The first thing that came to his mind was starling murmurations… this big piece of calligraphy in the sky,” he told CNN. He began photographing the birds near his childhood home in southern Denmark, before following various flocks on their migration routes across Europe, from Ireland to Italy.
Solkær’s latest photography book, “Starling,” published last month, chronicles this migratory journey and hopes to inspire with it a closer relationship with nature.
“One reason it continues to fascinate me is that it is new and unique every time it happens. “The shapes that appear in the sky occur only once in the history of the world,” he said. “I think that’s a very good reason to photograph them and try to capture them and share them with others.”
A sunset show
Solkær first published his starling images in his 2020 photography book “Black Sun,” describing it as “an exploration of where I come from and dealing with childhood memories.” After several seasons of photographing birds near the Wadden Sea in Denmark and neighboring countries, Solkær decided to expand the scope of the project and follow the birds as they migrate across the continent.
European starlings can migrate as far north as the Arctic Circle in summer and as far south as North Africa in winter. It’s during these migrations that starlings are most common, but the exact reason behind them remains a mystery: One widely accepted theory is that starlings gather in these dense aerial formations before sunset to make themselves appear larger to predators. But scientists suspect it could also be used to attract other starlings to roosts and create warmth in cold winters.
Solkær used Instagram hashtags to find where murmurations occurred, choosing destinations based on the size of the flock and the presence of predators such as peregrine falcons; because starlings create the most “beautiful, graphic shapes” when under attack. But even with the best plans, nature is unpredictable.
“It’s very temporary: You can take five good photos in half a minute, but you can’t take anything for the next six weeks,” Solkær said. “This doesn’t happen every night. The truly amazing formations normally occur once or twice a winter.”
One of the largest winter populations settles in Rome, Italy. The urban landscape and southern evening light contrasted sharply with Solkær’s work in the Danish marshes.
“It’s the same event, but the light is much more golden, the sky is beautiful,” Solkær explained. While most of his previous shots showing murmurs used a monochrome aesthetic, he began to play with colors as well as incorporating architecture in some images.
Rome also provided the perfect backdrop for Solkær to explore the relationship between wild and urban environments through the city’s difficult relationship with starlings.
“Rome spends a lot of money scaring the birds and getting them out of the city because they make a big mess,” he said, adding that the city hired a falcon to scare away the starlings.
Starlings have been a fixture in Rome since ancient times. “They thought that the shapes and behavior of the starlings were gods trying to communicate with humans,” Solkær explained. Oracles would read auspicious signs or bad omens that influenced political decisions. Drawing on this history of mysticism, Solkær captures the feeling of awe with fantastical formations framed above the towers of ancient architecture against a backdrop of cotton candy pastel clouds.
“This is a very different experience than standing in a field in the middle of nowhere. But I think it’s just as magical; It seems even more surreal when you’re in the city and watching the same thing happen. It doesn’t fit the ground very well, and that’s the reason for the great fight between the city of Rome and the birds,” Solkær said.
From macro to micro
While starlings are generally thought to be a common bird in Europe and North America, their numbers have been declining for decades (a 53% decline between 1995 and 2018) and they are on the Red List of threatened species in the UK.
“There are a lot fewer birds now than there used to be,” Solkær said, noting increased land use for agriculture, resulting in a decrease in available food.
Following the success of “Black Sun,” many biologists and ornithologists reached out to Solkær and inspired him to look at starlings not only from afar but also up close.
In collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, he produced two series of images taken through a microscope.
“Up close, it has really beautiful metallic feathers,” Solkær said. “From the big, macro world I saw in the sky, I tried to see if I could find some of the same universal patterns if I got really close.”
An ornithologist, an octogenarian professor at the Natural History Museum, gave Solkær a stuffed starling from the museum’s collection to photograph.
“I could see from the little tag on his leg that he died flying into a lighthouse in 1918, but he still looked perfect,” Solkær said.
He magnified the starling up to 12,000 times by photographing the bird under light and electron microscopes. Detailed images show map outlines, dense but delicate bands of feathers reminiscent of palm fronds and tree trunks, providing a striking contrast to clear-sky shots of murmurations.
“The closer we got, the bigger it looked, like mountains and river deltas,” Solkær said.
The project sparked Solkær’s interest in other conservation photography projects. He is currently working on a project about dragon blood trees, a rare species native to the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean, as well as a book about spirituality and nature in Bhutan in South Asia.
“At this point, at least for me, there’s no point in focusing on rock stars,” he said. “I think it is very necessary to pass on these stories now and inspire a closer connection with nature.”
When it comes to birds, Solkær is also considering other species for potential projects: dunlins, a gray bird with a white underside that performs an aerial dance similar to starlings; or the bright green parakeets that contrast sharply with the red rocks and stretching blue skies of the Australian outback.
“I don’t think I’ll do another starling book,” Solkær said. But he pauses and collects himself: “Actually, I think I will go to Sardinia in 10 days to photograph starlings. So who knows?”
Videos courtesy of Søren Solkær.
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