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These incredible photos reveal split-second moments of one of the most mysterious natural phenomena in the sky

Jessica OrwigDec 17, 2015, 23:07 IST

This might look like an egregiously misplaced school of fish, but it's actually an example of what ornithologists (bird experts) call a murmuration:

raisingmaggie = www.keepturningleft.co.uk

It's a flock of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of tiny song birds called starlings. But exactly how these swarms decide to move and when with such a fluid motion is a complete mystery.

Within a murmuration, starlings are constantly on the move, so the shape is always changing.

But some photographers managed to capture some incredible, split-second moments of these flowing flocks that look strikingly similar to common shapes like a gigantic smoking pipe, goose, and sting ray. Check them out below: