Birds on the move

IN THE DOG days of summer, you may wonder where all the birds have gone. Cuckoos have long departed south for warmer winter climes, swifts and swallows are slipping away too, and many resident species are laying low as they moult and grow new feathers. That lull makes the autumn jamboree even more striking, as hundreds of thousands of birds fly in from Iceland, Greenland, Arctic Canada and the Russian tundra. There are flocks of redwing, waxwing and fieldfare, set to munch their way through hedgerows full of berries. There are godwits and sanderlings headed for the coast, Bewick’s and whooper swans arriving on estuaries and wetlands, and there are honking skeins of geese – barnacle, Brent, taiga bean, pink-footed.

While those are serious journeys to winter food and shelter, starlings take to the autumn sky for what looks like sheer darn fun – wheeling, swerving, swirling in Etch A Sketch murmurations that can be 100,000 birds strong. It’s not clear quite why they do it, although there is always safety in numbers, and once they’re done dancing through the dusk, they huddle up for warmth in a roost for the night.