What's your favourite nature spectacle? A peregrine on the hunt? The autumn red deer rut? Flights of wild geese overhead on a winter afternoon?

We've got our "must sees" here at Nature's Home and today we present one of  the very best of all them thanks to a guest blog from Jacqueline Hitt who is studying for an MA in Nature and Travel Writing at Bath Spa University. This is a sight you can see  now and there are a few ideas for sites where you might see it (no guarantees!) in the current issue of Nature's Home magazine. It's starling roost season! Here's Jacqui...

Today’s weather doesn’t promise much. A morning of drizzle has given way to an afternoon quilted in light-grey, altostratus cloud. Its muddy and awkward underfoot; impossible to get a proper grip.

By mid-afternoon, what remains of daylight is ebbing away, colouring the flooded wetland fields in tints of pewter, gilt and green. A sense of possibility hangs in the air. It’s what’s brought this small group of strangers here. The hope of seeing a natural wonder only a few others will see.


One starling looks good in winter, but put tens of thousands together and it's a whole new ball game (Ben Andrew)

No-one speaks as we huddle behind a sun-bleached wooden screen by Hal Frankham’s lagoon in the middle of the RSPB’s Otmoor reserve. Everyone is intently watchful, observing the reed beds through rectangular windows in the screen. Someone has cut these out with care: each one strategically positioned to perfectly frame the wetland view. Nearby a herd of white and toffee-coloured cows are grazing on swathes of moist, marshy grass.The only noise is the gentle rustle of reed heads, a mallard or two’s call and the flapping of lapwings taking flight.

Streaming in
After a while, a trickle of birds comes into sight. It’s a small group of ten or so and flits over the glassy surface of the lagoon, dappling it with small, pebble shapes. Then another and another pass overhead. As we crane our heads-upwards to get a better look, the trickle becomes a streaming rush of beating wings, dark feathers and sharp beaks.  

Looking eastwards now towards the low-rising hills in the distance, we see something moving, rapidly and inexhaustibly towards us. From this far away, it looks menacing:  like a cloud of insects moving at speed. Edging closer, it grows and swells. It becomes possible to see that it’s not insects, but starlings: a swirling of thousands and thousands of their shiny, feathered bodies. Just like water, this avian river rises and falls, ebbs and flows, following an invisible course across the dusk sky.


Take your imagination along with you and you'll pick out shapes among the masses (David Kjaer rspb-images.com)

The starlings don’t billow into dancing clouds as we all expected them too. Instead they pour into the landscape like a huge conveyor-belt of life constantly moving above the horizon, flowing from right to left. The sheer numbers of starlings converging on this soggy corner of Oxfordshire is astonishing. As is that it all happens so quietly. 


As the light dims, more and more birds arrive and the sky fills with starlings (David Kjaer rspb-images.com)

After just over half-an-hour, the starlings suddenly stop, dropping like stones into the reed-beds below. They disappear as if swallowed by the land itself. But this isn’t what’s happened. The starlings have simply reached their destination, a safe place to roost. The reed heads on which they are perched sway to the same rhythm the flock did in the air.


Reedbeds provide a secure overnight home, but starlings also roost on piers, buildings and conifers (Eleanor Bentall rspb-images.com)

It takes us all a few moments to realise that the starlings have vanished, that the ‘show’ is over. We can hear them softly chittering and chattering to each other but can’t see them – not one. It's our sign that it’s time to go; that night will soon fall. 

As everyone heads back along the darkening path, a single marsh harrier circles above. We all ponder how much luck he will have tonight. The starlings know well how much safety - and warmth - there is in numbers.

Starlings in your garden?
Big Garden Birdwatch is just days away, so make sure you're prepared and don't miss Charlie Elder's feature in the Spring issue of Nature's Home showing what your results have revealed about our most familiar birds, including the fabulous starling. I hope you get plenty coming to visit for your Birdwatch. TIP: they love fat balls...