Hundreds of starlings descended on a road in Turkey, blocking the path of one driver who captured the moment in a video shared on social media.
Struggling to get through, the driver filmed the flock of birds scattered across the road in the city of Diyarbakir on Friday. As the car nears, they take flight and circle away from the road.
The swirling mass of starlings is then seen entirely covering the road ahead before swooping upwards as a van approaches from the opposite side.
The medium sized birds are native to Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as northern Australia and the islands of the tropical Pacific. Starlings have interesting vocalisations and on occasion embed sounds from their surroundings into their own calls, including car alarms and even human speech patterns.
Though much is known about the species, it remains less known how starlings take flight in such murmurations and flocks without colliding.
A similar scene was observed by a driver in Norfolk, England, in 2018. According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, flock of starlings sometimes descend on roads if there is water at the margins when fresh water may be hard to come by during frosty weather.
