{"id":515538,"date":"2026-07-08T09:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/515538\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T09:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:04:10","slug":"moment-of-calm-murmuration-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/515538\/","title":{"rendered":"Moment of Calm: Murmuration Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4MZFAOV_copyright_image_220150.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"735\" alt=\"Starling murmuration, Shell Bay, Studland\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nStarling murmuration, Shell Bay, Studland<br \/>\nPhoto: Tanya Hart CC2.0\n<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a story which goes with this week&#8217;s Sonic Moment of Calm.<\/p>\n<p>Bryan Crump wanted to record the sound of thousands of starlings roosting in the trees between the city and the waterfront, but human activity kept on interrupting.<\/p>\n<p>But Crump realised that in itself was a story; as the humans did their thing, the starlings did theirs.<\/p>\n<p>So, you&#8217;ll hear a\u00a0taxi driver parking his cab and running to the nearby toilet, a group of young men walking by heading for the pub, the taxi driver exiting the loo and driving off, and kids playing in the distance &#8211; while the starlings just keep murmurating away.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4JM0BEB_MOC_Starling_Droppings_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"576\" height=\"768\" alt=\"Starling droppings\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nBut plenty of evidence on the ground<br \/>\nPhoto: Bryan Crump\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4JM0BFN_MOC_Starling_City_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"576\" height=\"768\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nCan&#8217;t see them in the trees<br \/>\nPhoto:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starling murmuration, Shell Bay, Studland Photo: Tanya Hart CC2.0 There&#8217;s a story which goes with this week&#8217;s Sonic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,147,406],"class_list":["post-515538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}