Where is this?

Here's another. They are the same thing, almost.

 

Why don't you go outside and take a picture of a place and ask about that? I don't give a flip about Nancy's shavings.

 

They look like bird flights in a flock/murmuration to me.

 

Ok, this small harbour was enlarged from a natural cove in the cliff, by a famous lighthouse engineer. Originally a fishing village, once the harbour works were completed, it was able to export minerals, for which the area is known, until larger, deepwater ports were developed nearby.

 

Minerals. That covers a lot of possibilities.
Britain has a lot of types of minerals for a small island. I shall sleep on this clue.

 

The second photo is, indeed, a murmuration of starlings. The first photo is of white storks. The photos are a composite of images taken over the course of a few seconds.

How Xavi Bou Makes His Mesmerizing Portraits of Birds in Flight


Race Pigeons


Sea Gulls

 

Insects are an interesting subject of that technique.

 

I slept on it. No idea.

 

The county's metals have been mined since the bronze age, and the harbour began exporting these, but then it was taken over by a very different mineral used in both medicinal tablets and tableware.
The lighthouse engineer is best known for an 18th century tower off the shore of the neighbouring county, which was taken down and reconstructed in a major port when the rock on which it stood began to erode.

 

Based on that I would venture a guess. Near Bottalack, Cornwall.

 

You may be referring to Smeaton's Lighthouse, built on Eddystone Rocks, which was moved to Plymouth.

 

I'm thinking St. Ives.

 

Hoyt got Cornwall correct, but was on the wrong coast. Snug Charlestown Harbor is on the south coast, west of Plymouth. Copper and clay mines are northwest of Charlestown. The area must be chock full of interesting history! I wonder how hard-rock harbors were constructed before the use of modern equipment?

A brief history of Charlestown Harbor.

 

But the cove at St. Ives was improved upon by the 18th century lighthouse engineer.

As I was going to St Ives - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_was_going_to_St_Ives

 

Congrats IN, yes, Charlestown.
Hoyt, yes, absolutely, and St Ives is better known as a Smeaton work - the Victorians named the pier/breakwater after him.
Charlestown may have been his last work, but he was prolific. the Eddystone light (#3) 13 miles odd off Plymouth, is his most famous work, and revolutionised lighthouse building. He was consulted on the disastrous Rye harbour works at Winchelsea (63 years in the building, open for 4 months) but it looks like his recommendations were not carried out. He is credited with 'inventing' the profession of civil engineering. Charlestown may have been his last work.

Cornwall has a very rich and complex geology ( as a child, I made my parents holiday's a misery by nagging to go visit mining slag heaps to search for specimens) and was important, going back to the bronze age, for tin and copper. The Romans, and I understand the Greeks, had interests in these resources. After sardines, Charlestown was inititally exporting mostly copper. Then the china clay industry (kaolin) around Bugle and St Austell expanded, supplying the raw materials for fine china, medicinal tablets, paint, limewash, rubber, and many other industries. The harbour at Fowey and then Par were improved to allow larger vessels, and Charlestown fell behind. The St Austell deposits are the world's largest source of kaolin, and I remember again as a child, the landmark of 'the Cornish Alps' a group of peaks formed from the deposition of the kaolin extraction, which would light up pink in the light of the setting sun. Sadly, they were regarde as an eyesore, and the tops were scraped off to form rather ugly lumps, which were then seeded to make them ugly fuzzy green lumps. I have other tales too, about the china clay.

The Charlestown photo was taken in early September, in a brief lockdown window, out for a meal with my brother and sister in law. Charlestown is now a tourist attraction.