MURMURATIONS

In the dusk hours of a November evening in 2020 James Crombie set out for the shore of Lough Ennell Co Westmeath with no goal except to find a brief reprieve from the chaos of modern life One of Ireland s most lauded sports photographers Crombie had spent months each year travelling the globe snapping glimpses of sporting glory amid roaring crowds Once the pandemic arrived however he found himself suspended in an unfamiliar moment of stillness where his focus could roam beyond the pitch When a close friend came to him in a moment of grief the pair made for the lake What Crombie found on the shore that evening an undulating murmuration of starlings dancing above the surface of the water would change his life forever Desperate to capture the beauty of the murmurations and to better understand this phenomenon and the surroundings of the lake itself Crombie began a four year journey travelling to lake shore for over 100 days per year In his efforts to capture the formations of the magical birds Crombie managed to chart the stunning natural cycles of the lake and the surrounding countryside An incredible combination of narrative and photography this is a book about one man s quest to capture the beauty of an Irish natural phenomenon and about how o