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Ornithographies
Creating incredible images of bird flight with a special technique
© Xavi Bou
Photographer Xavi Bou creates incredible images of birds and their movements by combining his love of photography and technology with his love for birds and nature — as seen in his book, Ornithographies. He’s especially drawn to European Starlings and their movements as a flock, called a murmuration. The starlings fly in a tight, synchronized group, sometimes to avoid a predator.
Listen to this episode in Spanish here.
BirdNote®
Ornithographies
Written by Camilo Garzón
This is BirdNote.
Photographer Xavi Bou creates incredible images of birds and their movements by combining his love of photography and technology with his love of birds and nature — as seen in his book, titled Ornithographies.
Xavi Bou: And it's created by the Greek root ornithos, that is bird, and graphis, that is draw.
His images draw the paths that birds trace out in the sky with a special technique —
Xavi Bou: Through making visible several seconds into a single image. Instead of a still camera, use a cinema camera, and with all footage, I stitch all the frames into a single image. So in this way, we could see something that it's not possible to see, eh, naked eye. It's several seconds, clearly, in the single shot.
[European Starling murmuration calls and sounds]
He’s especially drawn to European Starlings and their chaotic and harmonious movements as a flock, called a murmuration. The starlings fly in a tight, synchronized group, sometimes to avoid a predator.
[European Starling murmuration sounds]
Xavi Bou: And it's not only a single group of birds flying away, it's interaction between the raptor — a Peregrine Falcon — and the starlings and the complexity between one each other. So the result is totally unpredictable because you never know the direction they're gonna take the group.
[European Starling murmuration sounds]
Check out some of Xavi’s mesmerizing images of the movements of starlings on our website, BirdNote dot org. I’m Camilo Garzón.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. European Starling ML181631 recorded by Gregory Budney.
Common (European) Starling Xeno Canto 605883 recorded by Alain Malengreau.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote September 2023
Narrator: Camilo Garzón
ID# boux-01-2023-10-10 boux-01
Camilo Garzón
Writer NarratorSights & Sounds
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