Hello there, a quickish blog today to let you know that we seem to have a rather large starling murmuration again at Old Moor. We've had a few hundred or maybe a couple of thousand birds on and off this winter, but nothing like the murms we had last year.
Adam Hutt tweeted the news yesterday of a murmuration of between 15 - 20 thousand birds! So today I arrived at OM later on this aft with a plan to see if this would happen again today. It was rather cold with a very chilly wind and also pretty gloomy so I decided to while away the time by doing my weekly shop before coming back to look for starlings.
I picked them up as I was driving along the bypass and as I reached the main gate around 5:40pm, there they were flying in the distance. I stayed at the gate and watched them flying through my bins. There were shapes and fabulous large flock movements. They seemed to be flying over the Mere/Family Hide area rather than the pylons over by the reedbed screen.
Here's maybe the worst video snippet ever of a starling murmuration! Taken on my phone from a distance in the gloom but great to watch, especially when they made shapes. :)
Here's the book from Old Moor today.
We still have the yellow browned warbler and firecrest at Wombwell and one black necked grebe was at Edderthorpe today.
There are more sightings from around the Dearne Valley on Twitter - check the feed of @BarnsleyBSG for news.
I'll finish today with a photo of a goldfinch in the bird garden this aft. It doesn't look very happy to me...