Raptors and black sun phenomenon

This weekend I went to Aventoft, a nice little town in the northern part of Germany, actually it is right on the border to Denmark, to see and photograph the black sun phenomenon. The event that takes place every year in the spring and autumn, where thousands of European starlings come together and perform some spectacular airshows.

On arrival I instantly had a bad feeling that we were not in the right place, as there were only a few other people there, usually this event draws in hundreds of spectators, but we decided to give it a try since we could not see any major gathering of people anywere else.

As the sun began to set it became more clear to us that we were the wrong place, and our suspicion were confirmed short after when we saw a huge flock of starlings in the distance. We did however decide to stay as there were something even more, to me anyway, exciting. 5 big raptors hovered the area, whether it was court ship rituals they were performing or they were fighting over territory I do not know, but they put on a show for us that were just as spectacular as the starlings.

Unfortunately the predatory birds were to far away for me to zoom in enough to get a clear shot of them, but it was fascinating to watch them in the air. Sadly nor was I able to determine precisely what species they were, I am almost certain there were several buzzards and maybe also a red kite.

Just before the sun was completely gone we decided to take a little drive in the direction we saw that big flock of starlings earlier, and after just a few miles east of were we were we found out where we should have been. There were almost as many people on the side of the road as there were starlings in the air. I counted 7 large busses plus somewhere between 50 and 100 cars all parked at the side of the small road making it difficult for other traffic to pass. 

I found a place where I could park our car without disturbing traffic and got out to see the last of the show and maybe get a few pictures.

It was well after sunset and the starlings were far out in the distance, but by cranking the ISO up to 800 and setting the apperture to f2.8 I was able to use a fast shutterspeed and get at least a couple of useful pictures. At first I was a little annoyed with all the windmills in the background, but after a little time I realized that bit was actually not so bad, and offered a nice variation to the otherwise standard orange sunset that is rather common in the black sun phenomenon pictures.

Speaking of the sunset, it was stunning this evening and just before we left the site with the raptors to go look for starlings, I got a few shots of the horizont as the sun went down and the moon came up.