Pilgrim’s Journal — Pembrokeshire: The Murmuration

I set off early that morning beneath one of the most beautiful sunrises I can remember.

The whole sky glowed with extraordinary shades of pink, and I remember feeling quietly grateful that I'd woken in time to experience it.

The previous morning at St Govan's Chapel had left my heart wonderfully full of gratitude.

Simply walking through the farmland felt like a gift in itself.

Ahead of me, a mysterious veil of mist had settled across the lower ground.

From where I was walking, I could only catch glimpses of it.

I found myself wondering how Broad Haven might look beneath those glowing pink skies.

The anticipation quietly grew with every step.

Then, about five minutes into the walk, something caught my eye in the distance...

Hundreds of birds were moving together across the dawn sky.

At first I assumed they were starlings.

But something wasn't quite right.

It wasn't until days later, after watching the footage back a few times, that I realised what it was.

The noise.

Starlings don't make that kind of racket!

I discovered they were jackdaws, perhaps joined by a few other members of the corvid family.

Somehow my ears had recognised them before my mind had.

I'd only ever associated murmurations with starlings. It took a few days for that assumption to loosen its grip before the realisation quietly dawned.

I had no idea corvids could move like this.

That discovery delighted me almost as much as the spectacle itself.

I'd always admired the intelligence of corvids.

But I'd never seen that intelligence expressed like this.

The flock seemed to possess a kind of shared intelligence.

No bird appeared to be giving instructions.

No obvious leader could be seen.

Yet every turn rippled through the whole gathering almost instantly, as though each bird was responding to something invisible that connected them all.

Then they began to approach me.

As they did, the flock divided.

Half swept to my left.

Half to my right.

My eyes naturally followed one stream of birds as they curved away into the extraordinary pink light.

For a few moments, birds and sunrise became part of the same living spectacle.

I could only smile.

For years, the crows at Woodland Glade had been quiet companions in my daily life.

They had become familiar neighbours.

Here in Pembrokeshire I met the corvid family in an entirely different way.

Not as a flock of birds.

As a living pattern.

Watching them wheel across the sky, I found myself wondering where their intelligence actually existed.

Did it belong to each bird?

Or did it somehow emerge through their relationship with one another?

Nature rarely insists that greatness belongs to individuals alone.

Again and again she reveals what becomes possible when many simple beings respond to one another with remarkable sensitivity.

The murmuration lasted only a couple of minutes.

Yet something stayed with me.

Awe.

Days later, when I realised they were corvids, the wonder of that morning deepened all over again.

Perhaps that was the real gift.

The pilgrimage wasn't only introducing me to new places.

It was quietly expanding what I believed the living world was capable of.