The Magic Of Starlings.

 I remember one winters evening when I was a child, walking through an underpass in Romford town centre. The kind of structure beloved of urban planners in the 50s and 60s, dishevelled by the 1980s and 90s of my childhood and youth. I recall reaching an open space at the bottom end of Romford Market, a sort of roundabout for pedestrians, open to the sky and fringed by small street trees. There was a cacophony in the skies, twittering, and the distinct whirring of hundreds of tiny wings. I was in the shadow of an urban murmuration, a big flock of starlings making their way to a communal roost somewhere else in town. I recall even at that young age, fascinated by anything small and flighted, being wonderstruck by this sensational display. Starlings are still common, but when I was a kid a flock of them could darken a grey Romford sky. Not so now. They have declined and become much scarcer since. While murmurations as big and bigger than that one I witnessed circa 1989 and still in single digits, still exist, they are few and far between, and invariably something of an avian tourist attraction, and very seldom in town centres. The Starling’s decline has been rapid, tragic and transformative.

Starlings in Cromer, spring 2022

Starlings are familiar, if not the most popular of garden visitors, I recall my aunt referring to the small bands of starlings which visited her bird table of a winters morning in the 1990s as a ‘raiding party,’ and even today they make short work of the fat balls and sunflower seeds we leave out for them. A pair attempted to nest in the apple tree in the back garden this summer, a glorious, noisy nest in a natural tree hole. They lack the tidy, hygienic practices of Blue Tits and other small passerines, which carefully move the fecal sacs away from the nest to avoid giving away its location. A static waterfall of white bird poo coated the bark beneath the hole. The adults were noisy too, attacking any magpie which landed in the adjacent trees. Sadly, I fear their efforts were not enough to protect their chicks from the big, mean corvids, as the nest fell silent one day, and no brown coated juveniles were seen on the lawn as I had hoped. I believe the garden nest of which I was most proud was not successful.

Starling in Maldon, Essex December 2022

The cause of Starlings’ decline is not known.   Agricultural intensification has led to shortages of food, especially the ‘leatherjacket’ cranefly larvae they particularly enjoy. They are badly affected by environmental pollutants, including medicines in wastewater, where exposed to them, but precise sources of exposure are unclear. Both the wintering, murmuration-forming populations and the resident population, which is highly mobile but not migratory, are in precipitous decline, with various sources pointing to declines of up to 70% since the 1960s, and 51% between 1995-20006.  They remain abundant in the United States, where they were irresponsibly released in the 19th Century, and have since become an invasive species. 

Starlings at a pre-roost gathering in the rigging of a Thames Barge.

But yet, on a winter’s evening on the Somerset Levels, or at Minsmere or Leighton Moss, murmurations in the tens of thousands are still recorded, big wheeling flocks throwing shapes against the cold sunset sky, descending noisily into the reeds, or onto artificial structures- Brighton Pier used to host a famous murmuration, before taking off again in an audible flurry of wings, until eventually, as darkness falls, they settle down, chattering gently to each other, before falling silent until morning, when they rise again in the dawn light, dispersing in small flocks- raiding parties, perhaps- to feed on whatever they can find, probing for invertebrates with the Lapwings in open fields, visiting and emptying your bird feeders, even raiding bins.  The crowd on the promenade sign pictured, from Cromer on the North Norfolk Coast, were eagerly descending on any dropped human food, and making a fuss around the dumpsters behind a chippy.  Individually starlings are beautiful, star spotted, iridescent, especially in the breeding season, when their bills turn from black to yellow and their plumage, with the protective breast feathers worn away over the hardships of winter, reveal a deep iridescence, of blues, greens and purples. Juveniles are solid brown, moulting into winter plumage in unusual patterns- a spangly starling with a brown head, often confusing inexperienced birders. But it is in numbers that they are most spectacular, and sought after, while barely anyone but little child-me looked up as they descended on Romford Market, the roost on the Somerset levels attracted hundreds of eager tourists, watching the Starlings of Bristol and Western Super Mare descend on the whispering reeds of the levels not far from Glastonbury Tour. Families had brought their kids to see them, and photographers brought an arsenal of lenses to capture the strange forms against the sunset. A group of students from Bristol Uni watched admiringly the psychedelic shapes in the sky, while an elderly gentleman with an elderly pair of swift binoculars watched from his mobility scooter. All left grinning along the banks or the muddy canal, to the car park in the dark.

The Otmoor Murmuration

I most recently watched a Murmuration when my partner, Emma and I headed up to Otmoor, the RSPB reserve near Oxford. Even on a grey Monday evening, the anticipation in the air was tangible as the sun briefly appeared through the clouds as it crossed the horizon, briefly flooding the countryside with orange glow before disappearing. We thought, standing in semi darkness, we might have missed the spectacle. However, we needn’t have worried, as the small, oval flocks began to converge in the sky, just above the treeline, merging into each other to form the big murmuration, which flowed in the air, creating strange forms there, ever growing as stragglers came to join it. After a couple of massed passes the starlings began to funnel down into the reeds, The sound, the whirr of wings, even at a distance, make the murmuration a sensory experience. I’ve never heard the sound of a murmuration accurately reproduced in Springwatch or any similar media documentaries, it seems a thing only to be experienced live. They funnelled into the reeds, the flock separating, as if the back end of it needs to wait in a holding pattern behind the disappearing lead birds, flowing back and forth like a liquid wave, until resuming the descent once the first wave had perched up.

The Otmoor Murmuration

Soon the birds had all disappeared into the reeds, though they kept twittering noisily, and one had to wonder what information was being shared down there. After about 20 minutes, something changed, and to our immense surprise, what seemed to be the entire flock took off, leaving the reedbed at speed for something low down on the other side of the path, leaving the reeds outside the hide once again silent.

And singly, they're pretty beautiful too. Starling in Cromer, Norfolk. 

The beauty of a murmuration is incredible. Inspiring. To all. You should probably go and see one. Before it is too late.

The Hala Starling Experience

The last few evenings, on the way home from uni, assuming I’ve coincided my arrival with the fading light, I have had the honour of what I can only describe as the Hala Green Starling Experience.  Hundreds, or thousands, of the birds have taken to roosting in the bushes which separate our gardens from those of the houses which back on to us, and, morning and evening, their flocks arrive and depart. When I was a kid I clearly remember walking with my dad and watching murmurations of starlings blackening the sky in Romford. The birds would roost in the trees which grew out of the roundabout, the junction of underpasses outside the library.  This must have been the late 1980s or very early 1990s, and birds change their distributions, and now, as far as I’m aware, spectacular murmurations in Metropolitan Essex are pretty much unknown. The Starling has declined in numbers by something like 70% since then, and murmurations do not happen over metropolitan Essex any more. 

Over suburban Lancaster, however, the situation seems to be rather different. There have been some huge flocks these past few days, I cannot hazard a guess as to how many birds were involved, but it must have been in the thousands, cloud-like flocks twisting and changing shape, the birds moving in close formation, coming in through the darkening sky, making several passes of the roosting bushes, a few individuals dropping out and perching there. A sparrowhawk at one point landed on one of the bushes into which they’d been flying and put some of the starlings up. Those deeper in the branches, presumably feeling protected by their enclosed position. The hawk went after those in flight, which swiftly joined the murmuration.  It went in for an attack and the birds avoided it, in a coordinated formation, a burst of speed moving like a wave through the flock. The predator seemed to manage to grab one, and was off pretty quickly.

Despite the paintwork on my car appearing to pay the price of these spectacular murmurations, it feels like something of an honour to watch such a wildlife spectacle over my home of an evening.  They continue chattering in their roost sites well into the night, especially if disturbed. Starlings generally behave like this only in winter, and the flock may have included birds which bred over a wide area, perhaps many of them breeding beyond these shores. Their murmurations are unpredictable, they may use one site for several nights in a row, and then, perhaps in response to weather or feeding conditions, they are not seen there for some time. Certainly, come the spring they will disperse again to their breeding habitats, and will perhaps disperse or move elsewhere long before that, but for the past few days the Hala Green Starling Experience has been a wonderful, and nostalgic, suburban wildlife spectacle!

Species Involved: European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)