“Rome in winter, shortly before dusk, means one thing: wheeling, elegant flocks of starlings—murmurations—performing extraordinary aerial ballets that, from a distance, look like ink smudges,” noted the photographer Paolo Patrizi. For native Romans, however, the swarming birds mean droppings coating every building and car in the city. Though Patrizi’s photograph centers this beautiful avian aerial ballet, the darkness he includes at each corner of the photograph suggests the murkier reality this display brings.