ML616885726

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Hard to estimate. Attempt to give an educated guess, but most of the flock is actually perched in the forest... Started in the opening (Herrengasse), counting around 10K in a closeby tree. With 36 of these trees visible from there and a few large flocks in flight, I rounded to 400K birds there. As I was walking down to the opening, I estimated 2-3x the group seen, relying partially on trees full of birds I could see and flocks I could hear on the other side, so 1M seems a realistic estimate, although there is of course a large uncertainty on this number. Finally in the opening there were more groups perched, with maybe another 200-500K birds. At this point, I also counted (by 1K) the continuous flow of birds flying from the east and arrived to a 184K. I could easily see this number multiplied by 10 accounting for the poor visibility and the large roost size. 400K+1M+300K+200K=1.9M I could easily believe the flock to be 5-10M.

Technical information

Model

NIKON D500

Lens

500.0 mm f/5.6

ISO

1600

Focal length

500 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/800 sec

Dimensions

5568 pixels x 3712 pixels

Original file size

533.01 KB