ONE of nature’s greatest spectacles has been captured by a photographer who spotted it unfolding above her home.

Elaine Visor shot these breathtaking images of starling murmurations in the wetlands close to her home in Spring Gardens, near West Auckland, County Durham, ahead of the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, which takes place from January 28 to 30.

Mrs Vizor said it was a reoccurring sight above the Spring Gardens Wetlands this month, with the starlings gathering together before choosing a roosting place for the night.

“They seem to start with small groups on the pylon wires and then group by group begin to swoop and whirl around the sky in unison,” she said.

“The groups merge and break off with fast swirling wheeling movements; great swooshes of noise resounding as they create patterns in the darkening sky.

"The flock flies as one, then as several groups which appear more faintly, then as the groups turn around and merge again the sky darkens with the denser black of the combined hundreds or thousands.”

It is understood starlings perform these mass aerial stunts for a number of reasons, including warmth and the ability to exchange information. Safety in numbers is another explanation, with predatory birds finding it hard to target one bird in the middle of a hypnotising flock of thousands.

RSPB spokesman Harry Bellew said: “Starlings are very lively, chirpy birds, and surprisingly they are the same bird that we see feeding in our gardens each day. But to see a murmuration as dusk fall is a real treat.”