Thank you to volunteer Phil for his article and stunning photos.
Most readers will be familiar with the concept of a starling murmuration even if they haven’t actually seen one. These gatherings of anything from a few hundred to many hundreds of thousands of starlings are formed shortly before they go to roost for the night. The birds swirl around in remarkable synchronicity sometimes forming interesting shapes in the air and this is thought to be designed to confuse aerial predators such as peregrines which may try to take birds from the flock.
These gatherings take place in autumn and winter and a few years ago I had the good fortune to witness one of the UK’s most spectacular starling murmurations at Shapwick Heath Somerset Wildlife Trust nature reserve.
On this occasion the experts estimated the size of the flock to be approximately ½ a million birds and this is truly one of nature’s greatest spectacles.
At Pulborough Brooks on 4 March a flock of about 300 starlings had gathered on the south brooks to feed and for about 15 minutes in the early afternoon they came close to Winpenny Hide where I was able to observe their behaviour and take many photos.
Here is part of the flock in feeding mode.
Starlings are very busy birds and rarely stay still for long. Within a split second they would suddenly take off all at once as shown in this photo.
When airborne they would frequently wheel with the same remarkable synchronicity keeping some sort of formation all the time.
In human terms it is rather like they all have a wireless connection to a computer that is sending out simultaneous messages about what to do next to all the birds in the flock.
The only occasion when the flight seemed chaotic were when the starlings appeared to be coming into land and then thought better of it as in this photo.
Just 2 seconds later the birds had wheeled left and orderly flight had been resumed.
This leads to the question as to how starlings can fly around in dense flocks in an orderly way without bumping into each other? Some research has been done which suggests that if an individual bird can continually monitor the flight of 7 of its nearest neighbours and react instantly to changes in flight then the whole flock can maintain orderly formation. This is thought to be how a starling murmuration works but it doesn’t completely explain what prompts the flock to change direction. Maybe it is the action of just one lead bird that sets off a reaction. This behaviour in birds is given a name “allelomimesis”, a word derived from ancient Greek which refers to imitating the actions of other individuals. Some people describe the effect this creates as if the flock itself is a living organism as well as all the individual birds.
While mostly the inter feeding flights would be short and last just a few seconds some proved to be longer and started to give the impression of a murmuration. But was this actually a murmuration? The birds were certainly not gathering prior to roosting, but the behaviour was the same, albeit not lasting as long. Most likely it has the same purpose of confusing predators, although there were no obvious ones nearby. A buzzard was perched on a fencepost about 200 yards away, but it didn’t seem to pose a threat. If a fox had approached I think I would have noticed. Maybe a stoat or a weasel could have been hidden in the rushes? Or maybe it is just standard practice to put on a display just in case a predator turns up.
Of course the starlings have no interest in whether or not we call it a murmuration. Some sources on the Internet say that the word can only be applied to starlings – others that it could be applied to the same behaviour exhibited by other birds. My preference is for the latter as there is no doubt I my mind that other species exhibit exactly this behaviour when gathering in flocks.
For example, some wader species do this when they are pushed off their mudflat feeding grounds by the incoming tide. This photo shows a huge flock of knots at RSPB Snettisham in Norfolk which has created a cloud that could easily be mistaken for a starling murmuration.
Large flocks of black tailed godwits can sometimes be seen at Pulborough in the winter and when disturbed by a raptor they will fly fast in a tight formation with frequent changes of direction. In this photo you can see from the aspect of the wings that the birds are all banking to the left in unison.
Starling flocks will diminish very soon with the birds dispersing to their breeding grounds. Some will stay in the UK, perhaps at Pulborough Brooks, but many more will head for Northern Europe. But once breeding is over these very social birds will start to gather again. This photo was taken by the café terrace in late July a few years ago.
Starlings are one our most fascinating species and demonstrate special skills that humans cannot hope to emulate and barely even comprehend.