Yesterday afternoon we made the relatively short journey to Coventry to visit Warwickshire Wildlife Trust’s Brandon Marsh nature reserve. We have been a few times over the last couple of years but this was the first time for a winter dusk.

We arrived mid-afternoon and wandered around the reserve’s tracks. The plentiful recent rainfall had made some paths and hides unreachable so our walk was somewhere shorter than usual.

As sunset grew closer, we walked down to the viewpoint overlooking Albert’s Reedbed and waited. The sky cleared and we had a bright sun lowering in the sky to shine light across the reeds. As we waited there was little sign of starlings; instead there was a steady stream of gulls overhead and pigeons occasionally crossing the view. After what seemed like an age, a single starling flew over the reedbed and disappeared from view.

A little while later a small flock of five started circling and after a few more minutes it started to attract more birds. The group continued to fly over our heads, slowly adding more and more starlings to its number but it then moved off and appeared to be heading away from our viewing point.

Then, from behind us a mass of birds appeared and started wheeling around the sky forming continuously shifting serpentine shapes. It suddenly dropped low over the ground and, to the sound of screaming children, rushed at head height over the gathering of watchers. This was the start of an amazing show of avian synchronised flying that was without doubt the best I’ve seen. The videos and images below speak for themselves…