Photography, Travel

Birds over Bucharest

The biggest murder of crows I’ve ever seen

I heard them before I saw them. The cacophony of thousands of wings flapping together through the hush of the dampened embers of sunset was something that I just could not ignore.

I had been editing photos of our day in Bucharest — we’d been to the Spring and Summer Palaces of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian leader who was executed in 1989, and to the small monastery which held Count Dracula’s gravesite — but I set my laptop aside and stepped out onto the balcony.

I’d never seen so many birds together at once. They filled the sky. They surged and swarmed and turned together.

And the chatter! At home, in Southern California, a large flock of parrots flies overhead in the morning and in the evening. They can’t fly in a straight line because they are so busy gossiping to each other about their day. But this was different. It was a sharper, louder sort of cry.

At first, I thought it must be a murmuration of Starlings. But these birds were bigger. And they didn’t fly in quite the same tight formation that moves and melds instantaneously into a myriad of forms, like Starlings do.

I had my iPhone 14 Pro Max in my pocket and I pulled it out and took a video. If you’d like to see it (and hear the birds), you can find it on my instagram page (you can’t embed videos on medium or I would share it here). (I just realized that this works — here is the link:)

I realized though that the phone could not do justice to the moment since the light was fading fast, so I ran for my Nikon Z9 with the NIKKOR Z DX 18–140mm ƒ3.5–6.3 VR lens that was already on it (my favorite travel lens because it is so multipurpose). I had no time for a tripod, so I braced myself against the balcony railing and snapped a few photos.

I thought this one looked a bit like a haunted castle scene.

It turns out that the birds are Hooded Crows. We’d seen one the night before, in Constanța on a walk along the famous promenade and I’d been so struck by its coloring.

Our Romanian friends kept telling me, when I showed them the video, that these were “corvids” (crows), but I didn’t believe them at first because I’d never seen so many crows together at once. But it turns out that they were right. I guess I should not have questioned the locals!

The sun slipped lower over the skyline of Bucharest, and the crows circled back time and time again, their silhouettes dark against the tangerine sky.

We have a lot of crows in our neighborhood and our house backs up to a tall hill with even taller pine trees, which are a favorite hang-out for our local Corvids.

I’ve always thought of them as a “gang” of crows because of the way they stick together and talk to each other all day long. But the official name of a group of crows is a “Murder” of crows, although it has also been called a horde, a hover, a mob, a parcel, a parliament, and a storytelling.

I guess, on this evening in Romania, they seemed most like a “hover” to me.

The sunset eventually faded into the black of night and the crows must have settled down somewhere to roost because they disappeared from the sky. Soon the lights of Bucharest flickered on, and I was left to wonder about why those crows had all taken to the sky en masse like that. It was a sight which will stay with me forever — a magical moment in Bucharest.

All photos were taken with a Nikon Z9 and a NIKKOR Z DX 18–140mm ƒ3.5–6.3 VR lens.

You might notice that this piece has been published in Full Frame, the new “Fine Art of Photography” dream child of Rodrigo S-C, GE McKerrihan and Duvy McGirr. Thank you for creating such a wonderful space for photography on medium.

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.