Bringing the flight patterns of birds to life

A simple video effect has been used to reveal the flight patterns of birds.

Prof Dennis Hlynsky, who works at the Rhode Island School of Design, created the effect by taking two seconds of footage and overlaying onto one frame. He then repeated this technique frame by frame.

He has used the technique to record the movements of several animal species and hoped the films might help improve scientists' understanding of animal behaviour.

BBC Click's Spencer Kelly reports.

Watch more clips on the Click website. If you are in the UK you can watch the whole programme on BBC iPlayer.

Watch Prof Hlynsky's full length videos of bird flight