Sky Dancers

3.30 pm; T-minus forty minutes until sunset.

The stage is set. The crowd is building. I am freezing.

I'm sat on the pebbly, and surprisingly comfortable, shores of Brighton's West Pier awaiting the final moments of sun and warmth. More and more people start to gather onto the stoney dunes and face into the calming flow of the tide. Families, students, children, dog-walkers, photographers, all in one place, admiring the same thing. Little by little, the sun begins to blend with the watery horizon and it's then when I see the first fluttering signs of the show beginning.

Like an orchestra warming up, you could feel the atmosphere rising and as I look up to the cloudless sky, they arrived. In their hundreds, merging together like brush and paint, effortlessly moving through the sky as one. For this, was the night of a M U R M U R A T I O N.

It is, by far, one of the most remarkable sights of the natural world. Thousands upon thousands of Starlings, moving through the sky like a dazzling cloud. You daren't look away for a second in case you miss even just a glimpse of this spectacle in front of you. Blissfully unaware of the crowd they had attracted, more and more birds joined in on the dance in the sky. Blending together as one, creating a group metres wide, you forget that these birds are just 20cm long. Drawn so long to their beauty and performance, I look to my right to see the whole beach admiring the exact same thing. Instead of entranced by the LED light of phone screens, everyone just stops, even if just for a few seconds and watches. It is a wondrous and purely magical event to witness.

As if joined by a symphony of music, the dance continues as the sun dips below the horizon. Unable to feel my hands, I decide to make my way back. Walking back up the beach, many people are still entranced by the evening performance of these birds. I keep a looking back as I get further and further away, unable to completely leave them. Now almost completely dark, they all suddenly drop into the silhouetted structure of the pier, as if giving their crowd a final bow.