The Fen Drayton Lakes starling roost has continued to impress visitors this week, and Saturday night was one of the best yet. Word has got around – the car park was overflowing with admiring visitors, some were regulars, some were full of anticipation for a spectacle they’d never previously witnessed.
The pattern started off just like any other night, with the first few groups to arrive all being quite small. They met up, and flew around, as if looking for the others.
Gradually, more and more flocks arrived, sometimes small, sometimes a few hundred birds, and somehow each new flock joined the performance without breaking the movement.
Within a few minutes, there were 6000 dancers in the sky in front of us, moving as one, like a ballet.
Suddenly, the mass of starlings condensed from a 100 metre-long cloud to a 10 metre ball. A sparrowhawk had arrived, and was intent on a starling supper. The raptor flew up to the ball, and it exploded, like a firework, as starlings separated and regrouped behind and below the sparrowhawk.
The sparrowhawk turned, and came back for another attempt. It failed again, bamboozled by the throng. Then a second sparrowhawk joined in, causing more confusion for the first sparrowhawk as well as for the starlings. The sparrowhawks soon disappeared – we couldn’t tell if they had supper or not.
All I could hear were two different noises – human voices, saying “wow”, and dozens of camera shutters clicking. One of Gill's pictures is already on our photo gallery - can you spot the sparrowhawk?.
The starlings continued their performance for a few more minutes, and then about two thirds of them tumbled en-masse from the sky into the reedbed, where they would spend the night. The others did a couple of turns, and then half of them dropped to the reeds. The sequence was repeated, and then the last group joined them. The starling show was over.
After a few minutes, the rooks and jackdaws began their roost flights, but most people had gone, missing out on a second, but different bird spectacle. There’ll be more on this one another time.