Well, what do you know? The starlings are making a comeback.
I remember being stopped in my tracks, back in the early 1980s when I regularly used to find myself at Temple Meads railway station in Bristol at dusk, by the spectacle of tens of thousands of tightly-massed starlings pulling astonishing liquid shapes in the sky, as if controlled by a single whimsical intelligence, determined to have a bit of fun before allowing them all to drop under the shelter of the station roof to roost for the night. The first time I saw it I thought I must be hallucinating, as I was standing there, open-mouthed and amazed, but nobody else seemed to be paying the slightest attention. They never did. Then someone filmed starlings doing their bedtime sky-writing for a TV programme, and suddenly everyone had permission to notice them. I'm told you could sign up for starling-watching trips out to the Somerset Levels (despite the fact that this spectacle was happening every evening over most large city centres). People's ability to blank out the extraordinary never ceases to amaze me; mind you, I expect there are distinct evolutionary advantages in not standing around gawping at the way a charging lion's mane is catching the sunlight.
Mysteriously, starling populations crashed either side of the millennium, as did those of other very common birds, in particular the house sparrow. No one really knows why, but for many years the sight of either species – formerly so ubiquitous as to be a bit of a pest – was cause for comment. I never once saw a house sparrow in Southampton from 1984 until about three years ago, when that unmistakable monotonous cheeping sound started to be heard again in garden shrubbery. This year I keep seeing small flocks of starlings – about 50 birds – exploding out of trees as I do my regular walks across the Common and the Sports Ground. It seems they are recovering, and maybe soon those small flocks will be coalescing into one enormous flowing organism over this city, too. I really look forward to it.
9 comments:
There were loads of starlings about in Stevenage about five years ago and they were very bold: I have a video clip of one alighting on my table outside a cafe to pick uo crumbs. They don't seem so numerous recently, though.
Btw, I can think of a good reason not to look up at a flock of birds with your mouth open ...
I always thought if starlings were rare birds they would be considered beautiful. Their plumage is amazing when it catches the sun. But they are so ubiquitous that it often goes unnoticed. Their silhouette in flight is quite elegant but their bill looks to sharp and pointy for them to get the affection that a sparrow or robin gets.
Gavin,
I like them for all those reasons, and *because* they're common! (or ought to be, and with any luck will be again).
Mike
Mike,
For the past four years or so, in the middle of November, yellow tailed wagtails flock in Woking before starting their migration. Not on the same scale as starlings but I find their possession of the town centre fascinating. Earlier in the week I stood transfixed as normal life streamed past, unaware.
Huw
Huw,
Curious, I wonder why they choose Woking? My oddest migration experience was sitting in the Staff Club at work looking over the campus, and noticing a Painted Lady butterfly flying steadily north. Then, a few seconds later, another. Then another... It kept on all through my lunch break, a steady linear stream of them, presumably having crossed the Channel on their annual migration, an astonishing feat for something so (apparently) frail.
Mike
Mike,
I suspect they don't choose Woking (i.e. we don't have visitors from Guildford and Chobham) and it's just locals assembling. They like the trees in town, which may be that much warmer and have more insects/energy.
Excellent pictures, especially the second.
Huw
Huw,
It seems town centre trees are a whole ecosystem in their own right. In both Southampton and Bristol there are all-nite congregations of restless (clubbing?) birds hanging around the brightly-lit trees! They must either never sleep, or roost during the day. Urban birds...
Mike
The bird I mentioned as starling (geddit?) of my video, above, was one of many living in the trees in the town centre location you would remember as "in front of Littlewoods".
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