MAJESTY IN MOTION
A murmuration of starlings is one of nature’s most wonderfully evocative spectacles, says Cal Flyn
Cal Flyn marvels at murmurations of starlings in Gretna Green
All through the winter months, a natural phenomenon takes place over the fields, reed beds, salt flats and, well, car parks of Scotland. Starlings take to the sky in their thousands to perform the beautiful swooping, soaring displays known as murmurations.
Rising up in a shape-shifting cloud, the birds move through the air like a shoal of fish, wheeling and swirling, the edges of the flock stretching away and coming back a gain in an elastic, semi-rhythmic movement. They will murmurate most evenings, starting in November and going through until April, and are well worth a trip to watch in person.
Gretna Green, close to the border with England, hosts one of the United Kingdom’s biggest starling roosts. Keen birders congregate there nightly to await the display. When I visited at the end of November, we found them a mile or so south of the village, on the road to Metal Bridge. Arriving around half an hour before sunset, we found a layby where a small crowd of enthusiasts and photographers were already waiting in cars.
Among them was Axel Hellwig, a keen amateur wildlife photographer, who had driven an hour from Dalbeattie to see them
The birds move through the air like a shoal of fish, wheeling and swirling
following a recommendation from a friend. This was, he said, a repeat visit – having made the journey earlier this year and the year before. ‘It’s one of nature’s greatest spectacles,’ he said.
This year, the roost has grown and some nights numbers are in the tens of thousands – although, as with everything in the natural world, there are no guarantees. After three or four nights of spectacular display last year, said Axel, one evening they lifted up together as one and sped off into the night, and were not seen for weeks; it’s possible they were spooked by a bird of prey.
Having driven down from Edinburgh especially, we crossed our fingers and settled down to sit and wait on a five bar gate. Ahead of us, across the fields, I can see the Esk estuary and the merse (salt flats) further along the coast, glinting in the low light. A row of pylons marched away across the farmland to the west and behind us, very close, lay the noisy path of the M6; this is no pristine wilderness, but the starlings seem to like it.
These garrulous birds are not at all daunted by human activity. In fact, some of their favoured sites include such unlikely wildlife hotspots as the Asda car park in Elgin, the retail park on the outskirts of Inverness and the overflow car park at Inverclyde Royal Hospital (although those hoping for more picturesque surroundings for photography may prefer to head to RSPB Mersehead in Dumfries and Galloway or the north east shore of Loch Leven).
I remember them crowding every ledge in Inverness town centre during my childhood, and perhaps because of their urban connotations they are often maligned as pests. However, their numbers have been in freefall since the 1980s, earning them a place on the ‘critical’ list of UK birds at risk. But take a closer took and you will find them attractive, intelligent birds. Their black speckled plumage shines with purple and green iridescence, and their beaks colour-change from summer’s yellow to winter’s black. They are also inveterate mimics, and love to impersonate the birdsong of other species, car alarms and even human speech.
The motivation behind the murmuration behaviour is not fully understood, although it is thought that these twilight flights help them to congregate in safe roosting areas as they settle down for the night. The mechanics are better known, having drawn the attention of particle physicists at the University of Rome: in 2010 they published a mathematical analysis of flock dynamics which likened them to avalanches in their capacity for near-instantaneous transformation.
In brief: each bird keeps track of seven other birds, constantly adjusting their own flight according to their neighbours. (The same team has since published a fascinating analysis of the swarming behaviour of midges: ‘collective behaviour without collective order’.)
Back in Gretna the sun was down, a thin sweep of cloud along the horizon was up-lit. We waited tensely for movement. And then, small groups of starlings began to arrive, like fingerprints pressed against the sky. They alighted in nearby trees. Then, as the minutes ticked by, more and more came in, and those that had already arrived took to the sky and began to whirl to and fro, constantly on the move.
There was a liquid quality to the flock, its edges curving and irregular yet clearly
defined. All the time smaller flights were being attracted into the larger body, or – when it stretched out thinly – breaking off as droplets, and swooping away only to return a minute later.
The collective took on its own personality, sweeping overhead in a breathy whisper, then making a handbrake turn to swing out over the road, where it seemed to hang for a moment, pulsating.
The dusk lowered down around us, and with it the birds became harder to discern – disappearing for seconds at a time as they presented their narrowest profile, then appearing again in a mass, dark and dense, as they turned in unison and were silhouetted black against the sky. Shape-shifting, constantly in motion.
We observers stood with our mouths agape as they washed over our heads as waves, making the occasional comment or collective sigh of appreciation. It felt a bit like bonfire night – wrapped up warm against the cold, and the more prepared among us drinking hot tea from flasks.
And then – just as my feet were getting cold and the goosebumps were coming up on my neck – the birds as one twirled in the air and came to rest in the branches of a line of windbreak trees, perhaps 200 metres up the road. The show was over, and our motley party broke up and drove away into the dusk.
If you are keen to see a murmuration for yourself, I recommend the Starlings in the UK website (starlingsintheuk. co.uk) which keeps a regularly updated ‘starling roost map’, and compiles reports from birders across the country about the best places and times to find them on its social media accounts.
But don’t delay – they are at their peak right now, and the numbers of birds taking part will fall off during spring as they return to their summer haunts in mainland Europe.