Not a picture of thousands of starlings

Confession time: I took this shot in March, not today. In my defence, today's photographic efforts were restricted to a few old 'uns playing bowls in the park and try as I might I couldn't get myself sufficiently worked up about it to capture anything exciting. And anyway I like this shot so why shouldn't I give it a plug here? Whose rules are we following anyway?

There was a pretty spectacular sunset going on the night I captured this one. I was on the pier trying to avoid photographic clichés (which is really quite hard when you're on Brighton pier and there's a great sunset going on I can tell you). It was also roosting time for the starlings, and for a few glorious moments they were swarming around me like bees - I could hear thousands of individual wing beats as they flew over my head and beneath my feet. It was truly exhilarating. But this isn't a picture of that...