Tag Archives: Starlings

Village starling murmuration

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Yesterday evening as the light was starting to ebb away, we ventured out to see if we could watch the starling murmuration that has started to build above our village.

We had been having glimpses of it on previous nights from our upstairs windows but these were often obscured. So, we walked up through the village and watched the starlings doing their performance.

We weren’t disappointed as the flock was murmurating almost immediately and it continued to grow as the minutes wore on. The flock wheeled above the houses, breaking and reforming many times until they eventually started to fall to a large long bush in a front garden. The chattering in the bush got louder as more and more dropped in for the night.

Starling sunset

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With starlings nesting in our loft in the spring, generally making a noise up there much of the rest of the time, and frequently taking over the bird feeders in the garden, we tend to forget the winter spectaculars they are famous for.

However, one of the local bird blogs revealed last weekend that there is a starling murmuration at one of our nearby nature reserves, Summer Leys. After a day of DIY, we headed over there late on this afternoon.

It was a bright, completely clear evening as we stood by a gate overlooking some pasture and a reedbed in the distance. It took a while for the first groups of starlings to come into the area but then they just kept on coming…