On the old X10 thread, I discovered that one or two, including "Ed Sutton" (Dave) were anglers like me, and seemed to appreciate anything with a river or lake in it.
For those of us who look forward to our winter fishing on the Somerset Levels, you can imagine that it's been a pretty lean time; in desperation, I was out last week prospecting the banks of one or two rivers there in the hope of getting at least one session in before the end of the coarse fishing season.
I was surprised to find the R. Brue near Glastonbury in good fettle, and started taking photos to e-mail to my angling pal with a view to a spot of mutual weekend sport. There's nothing significant about this first shot taken as the sun went down (I've posted similar before), unless you look closely, particularly towards the top right of the shot:
DSCF6247 by
wylyeangler, on Flickr
I should have known: it was the 'witching hour', and all around I could hear the usual sort of demented twittering that precedes the event I and others have witnessed many times at this location. Then it started:
DSCF6268 by
wylyeangler, on Flickr
Although a common sight here, nothing prepared me for the sheer scale of what I saw on Thursday last. Several flocks of starlings got airborne simultaneously and amalgamated into one huge 'cloud' that swept over me at about 15 to 25 feet - how I was not 'anointed' is amazing. I easily got off 3 sets of bracketed exposures during what amounted to an 'eclipse' - more than 15 seconds (I've timed it since). How many thousands of birds must be involved, I can't even guess at:
DSCF6271 by
wylyeangler, on Flickr
As usual, the whole 'performance', from beginning to end, was over in minutes. I'm glad I had the trusty old X10 to hand.
Pete