Birds Make Amazing Bird Shape In The Sky

An amateur wildlife photographer captured an incredible thousand-strong starling murmuration flying over his home earlier this month.

But Steve Houghton, 49, hadn’t realised until he got home to process the images that they were soaring in the shape of a dove.

Steve had decided to photograph the flock as they were getting ready to roost for the evening over Rutland Water in the East Midlands.

He said: ‘I was beginning to process the photos when I came across this image, basically thousands of flying starlings doing an almost perfect impression of one giant flying starling.

‘Thankfully the speed at which the camera is able to take images enabled me to capture it perfectly.

‘I did not even see it with my own eyes. I just took the burst of photos at a quick speed using the lens right open.'

Houghton - who insists that no Photoshop trickery was used in these images - is a civil servant but has been photographing wildlife for over 25 years. He said he has never seen or heard of anything like this before.

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He added: ‘It is pretty incredible really.’

Starlings are slightly smaller than blackbirds and have speckles on their body.

They can be seen almost anywhere in the UK, including over piers, wetlands and farmland, but they best time to see the murmurations is between October and March.