There has been some great sights that I have seen at Middleton Lakes, there is one that I will never forget being the Murmuration of Starlings. It was such a delight to watch small groups merge with each other. It took some time before about 6000 starlings came together. I was fascinated, and finally they all came to a stop and setlled down in the reed beds for the night.
I wanted to know more about why they do this and the quick answer I came across was...nobody really knows, however, it is theorised that it is to protect each other from predators. If you have not seen him/her, we do have a sparrow hawk that will fly around.Now if you do spot a Sparrow Hawk flying around when there are birds such as Starlings and Blackbirds, then it possibly a female. It is reported that they tend to go for the larger bird. Back in the 70's surveys were carried out that explained starlings in larger groups seems to respond faster in the presence of the Hawks. More recently has shown the formation of the waves you see, helps to reduce the number of peregrine attacks. The other fascination, is how do they avoid each other. They do fly a little close, so how come no crashes are seen. Well, this has been looked at by a team of researchers who discovered that this is a complex physical phenomenon, called - wait for it scale-free correlation. For anyone wanted to read the paper on this here is the link Seems a clever way of avoiding the predator.
Here is a short clip I took and hope to see again when I next visit Middleton, although I know they don't like rain (who does) and if it is going to occur it will be around dusk. Hope you get to see one.
ReferencesHolden P, Cleeves T (2006) RSPB Handbook of Birds 2nd edn. Singapore: Tein Wah Prss (Pte.) Ltd.
King AJ, Sumpter DJT (ND) Murmurations Current Biology Vol 22 No 4 p112-114
Cavagna A, Duarte Queirós SM, Giardina I, Stefanini F & Viale M (2013) Diffusion of individual birds in starling flocks Proc Biol Sci; 280(1756): 20122484.
Cavagna A, Cimarelli A, Giardina I, Parisi G, Santagati R , Stefanini f, & Vialea M (2010) Scale-free correlations in starling flocks. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 107(26): 11865–11870.