\n Judging by social media posts, searching for starling murmurations has become an increasingly popular autumn and winter activity, particularly when thousands of birds are involved.\n<\/p>\n
\n The mesmerising swirls of pre-roost starlings have been popularised by wildlife TV programmes such as Winterwatch, used by businesses as a visual reference for teamwork, and, in recent years, incorporated by a string of different companies into advertisements for their products.\n<\/p>\n
\n The starling, and its instinctive cooperation to avoid predation, has become a cultural metaphor for working together for a common cause.\n<\/p>\n
\n Newly fledged starling chick (Image: Margaret Holland)\n<\/p>\n
\n For me, it is a little like the feeling one has when an obscure artist or musician you have followed and admired for years suddenly becomes popular: \u201cYeah, well, I discovered them years ago, before they were famous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Behind the sports field of my old secondary school stood dense clumps of hawthorn.\n<\/p>\n
\n In mid-winter, just as the school day ended, several thousand starlings would gather to roost in the relative safety of the thick, prickly scrub.\n<\/p>\n
\n But as the afternoon quickly darkened and waves of starlings continued to arrive, the twisting mass made it impossible to estimate their true number.\n<\/p>\n
\n Occasionally, I would delay my walk home to watch them in their unbelievable shape-shifting twists and whirls.\n<\/p>\n
\n Alone in the chill air and fading light, the experience has remained profoundly memorable.\n<\/p>\n
\n But familiarity, they say, breeds contempt.\n<\/p>\n
\n I closely associate the starling with the house sparrow, as they were by far the most common birds of my urban youth.\n<\/p>\n
\n Putting scraps out in the garden meant that few other birds got a look-in.\n<\/p>\n
\n The starlings would bully other birds, even the feral pigeons; they constantly squabbled and fought among themselves.\n<\/p>\n
\n Singing male starling (Image: Julian Thomas)\n<\/p>\n
\n I found them bad-mannered, unruly and rather loutish, both in appearance and behaviour.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hoping for blackbirds, blue tits, and robins, I\u2019d have preferred they weren\u2019t there.\n<\/p>\n
\n But in nature, as with life, one must be careful what one wishes for.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to the RSPB, the UK’s breeding starling population declined by 80% between 1970 and 2024.\n<\/p>\n
\n In autumn, starlings migrate here and boost the numbers of our own birds.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, similar population declines on the continent, combined with milder European winters, mean that fewer now travel to the UK.\n<\/p>\n
\n Starling murmurations now rarely reach into a million birds, as many once did.\n<\/p>\n
\n In modern times, the starling has always had a close association with us.\n<\/p>\n
\n They found our built environment perfect for nesting opportunities; the only other requirement being a nearby lawn or park, rich in earthworms and leatherjackets.\n<\/p>\n
\n Even in our great cities the starling could thrive.\n<\/p>\n
\n The relatively liberal diet of the adult birds allowed them to benefit from our wastefulness, and like feral pigeons and house sparrows, this led to our disregard, even contempt.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Central London murmurations, and resulting roosts, of the 1930s and 40s were astounding, with estimates of over two million birds during the particularly hard winter of 1946\/47.\n<\/p>\n
\n Starlings spent the night under bridges, and on the city\u2019s most iconic buildings, including Whitehall and Westminster Abby.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 1949 a flock roosting on the hands of Big Ben, stopped the clock!\n<\/p>\n
\n Despite the authorities being driven mad by the thick layers of droppings, a Londoner\u2019s evening journey home must have been made a little more thrilling by the sight of such spell-binding murmurations.\n<\/p>\n
\n As recently as the 1980s, I recall seeing, and hearing, starlings roosting in the plane trees around Leicester Square.\n<\/p>\n
\n Starling leaving nest (Image: David Savory)\n<\/p>\n
\n The starlings are gone now, as are the house sparrows that once hopped between the tourists’ feet.\n<\/p>\n
\n Here in Norfolk, large starling roosts could be met with consternation too, particularly by those whose livelihood depends on harvesting reed for thatch.\n<\/p>\n
\n A favoured, and more natural site for a starling roost, is deep within a reedbed.\n<\/p>\n
\n They feel safe clinging to reed stems over water, although these quickly bend and break under the weight, moving the starlings onto the next bed of reed the following evening.\n<\/p>\n
\n Flattened and soggy reed is no good for harvesting, although with starling numbers so low, this is an infrequent problem now.\n<\/p>\n
\n Reedbed roosts always attracted the attention of raptors, and I have been lucky enough to see hen harrier, merlin, marsh harrier, and peregrine, all at the same roost, each attempting to snatch dinner out of the air.\n<\/p>\n
\n Occasionally bittern will hunt at night among reedbed-roosting starlings.\n<\/p>\n
\n A welcome change from a fish supper perhaps!\n<\/p>\n
\n Of course, predation is another good reason to keep moving a roost site.\n<\/p>\n
\n I\u2019m not sure when it happened, but the starling has become one of my favourite British birds.\n<\/p>\n
\n I have two starling nest-boxes and each one is used, with both pairs often raising two broods.\n<\/p>\n
\n In spring, both male and female starlings have bright metallic coats of purple and green.\n<\/p>\n
\n When their glossy feathers catch the light, they shimmer a spectrum of colour \u2013 like oil on water.\n<\/p>\n
\n Both parents work hard to raise their chicks, with the male occasionally breaking off feeding duties to deliver his \u201csong\u201d from the chimney top.\n<\/p>\n
\n With much wing beating, it is a weird electric-sounding series of clicks and whistles.\n<\/p>\n
\n They are amazing mimics too, and can copy other birds, car alarms, and phones ringing.\n<\/p>\n
\n Last spring, I kept hearing a wigeon calling somewhere in my garden \u2013 as a winter duck in the UK, this seemed highly unlikely.\n<\/p>\n
\n One of my starlings must have spent the winter on a Norfolk Broad\u2019s marsh!\n<\/p>\n
\n They are resolute parents, spending the whole spring constantly probing my lawn for worms, leatherjackets, and other insects; in and out of the nest box – a flying tag-match with their partner.\n<\/p>\n
\n When the young finally appear, they are a uniform chocolate colour and lack the glisten of an adult.\n<\/p>\n
\n They are relentless in their pursuit, and constant in their demand for food, from their over-worked parents.\n<\/p>\n
\n Unfortunately, this year\u2019s scorching summer, and rock-hard ground, prevented them attempting a second brood.\n<\/p>\n
\n This homage to the common starling, or chimney-snipes as my dad used to call them, was prompted by a recent walk.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the first fade of light, a group of local starlings had lined up along a rooftop and on the TV aerial.\n<\/p>\n
\n They gave the impression of exchanging information with one another, just nattering about their day.\n<\/p>\n
\n Their conversation was the usual jumble of strange clacks, snaps, and shrills, as starling conversations often are.\n<\/p>\n
\n It left me with a feeling of nostalgia, and saddened for their plight, for the chattering of starlings will always be, for me, the evocative sound of the dimming light on a late autumn\u2019s afternoon.\n<\/p>\n
\n The starling is now classified in the UK as a \u201cRed List Species\u201d under the Birds of Conservation Concern.\n<\/p>\n
\n The decline of the starling has left me a little ashamed of my previous attitude towards them, and it is a grim reminder that we must not take nature for granted, even when it appears to be widespread and abundant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judging by social media posts, searching for starling murmurations has become an increasingly popular autumn and winter activity,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-805474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}