KEY INFORMATION
• Starling Hotline: 07866 554142
• Avalon Marshes Centre, Westhay BA6 9TT; avalonmarshes.org
• Ham Wall National Nature Reserve, Meare BA6 9SX; rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/ham-wall
• Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve, Westhay BA6 9TT; publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/62056
• Railway Inn, Ashcott Road, Meare (01458 860223). Open from 4.30 Mon, Tue, Thu & Fri; from noon Wed, Sat & Sun. Beer, local cider and filled rolls available.
As starlings once again begin to swoop and swirl in mesmerising shape-shifting clouds, Andrew Swift takes a closer look at one of the most celebrated natural phenomena…
Waiting on the platform at Temple Meads as the light fails on a winter’s afternoon isn’t as diverting as it was in the 1980s. Back then, as dusk fell, tens of thousands of starlings would spiral overhead, tracing swirling patterns in the darkening sky before settling to roost under the high arch of the roof. These spectacular displays had their downside, however, as droppings fell copiously on stonework and passengers alike, but attempts to put an end to them by draping nets across the open spaces at either end of the roof were only partially successful.
The railway authorities needn’t have worried, though. Forty years ago, there were around 70 urban starling roosts like that at Temple Meads across the country. Today, they are but a distant memory, for between 1967 and 2015 the number of starlings in England fell by a staggering 87%.
Starlings aren’t the only species to have experienced such a precipitous decline. House sparrows and skylarks have also suffered catastrophic drops in population, and, while there is no consensus as to the cause, many people are convinced that changing farming practices are largely to blame. Starlings feed on insects, earthworms, spiders, centipedes, woodlice, snails, slugs and leatherjackets, many of whose numbers have plummeted due to the use of pesticides and the loss of flower-rich hay meadows.
Farmers can’t shoulder all of the blame, however. As their partiality for urban roosts once demonstrated, starlings aren’t averse to city life and can still sometimes be seen foraging on suburban lawns. Such scenes were once far more common, however, and, according to the garden writer and broadcaster Kate Bradbury, this is down not only to ‘the loss of green space, the paving and fake-turfing of gardens’, but also to the quest for perfect lawns, which entails dousing them with chemicals and eradicating the critters which starlings and other birds depend on.
It isn’t only in Britain that starling numbers have fallen; it’s a similar story across much of Europe. In North America, however, although their numbers have declined, they are still plentiful enough to be regarded as a pest. The curious thing is that, until 1890, they were unknown in North America. The reason they turned up then is thanks to a businessman from the Bronx called Eugene Schieffelin, who, as part of an attempt to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays into the United States, released a hundred or so starlings in Central Park. Most of the species he introduced failed to become established, but within less than a century starlings had become one of the most abundant birds across the entire continent, ousting native species, disrupting local ecosystems and causing damage to agricultural resources.
Starlings were long regarded as a pest in this country as well, which explains why their spectacular urban roosts aroused hostility – or at best indifference – rather than admiration. In the 1920s, for example, the zoologist WE Collinge described them as ‘a plague in the land’. They did have a few admirers – such as the poet WH Auden, who wrote in 1932 of ‘patterns a murmuration of starlings rising in joy over wolds unwittingly weave’ – but for the most part the focus was on the trouble they caused rather than their breathtaking balletics.
A key moment in their rehabilitation came in 2006, when the makers of a popular brand of lager were so convinced that footage of starlings swirling around the evening sky at Slimbridge would help to boost sales that they used it in a TV commercial. Whether it had any impact on the consumption of lager isn’t clear, but across the country millions of people suddenly became aware of starling murmurations for the first time.
Above: Starlings at Shapwick Heath
Above: an art installation evoking a murmuration, created from willow by Laura Ellen Bacon at the Holburne Museum in Bath in 2015
‘Murmuration’ is not a recently-coined word – it was recorded as far back as 1450 – but only in recent years has the once little-regarded spectacle of starlings massing in the skies at sunset become one of our most celebrated natural phenomena.
Why they congregate in such numbers to execute these high-speed synchronised manoeuvres isn’t clear. Evading predators and keeping warm are two of the more commonly peddled theories; it’s also been suggested that murmurations are visual invitations to attract other starlings to a roost. Scientists have established, however, that murmurations have no leaders and follow no plan. Instead, improbable through it may seem, the birds observe what those around them are doing and react accordingly. Researchers in Italy who have tracked the paths of individual birds within vast flocks believe their findings may have practical applications, such as developing groups of autonomous vehicles which can work in tight formation without colliding. It has also been suggested, for example, that swarms of drones, programmed to behave like starlings, could be deployed over farmland to tend crops.
You don’t need to be a scientist to marvel at murmurations, though, as the growing number of people who flock to fens and reedbeds across Britain to see them proves. One of the best places to see them – and certainly one of the most popular – is on the Avalon Marshes near Glastonbury. But popularity has its downside, and you need to plan your visit carefully.
Arriving early is essential – no later than around two o’clock, because when the car parks are full there’s nothing else for it but to turn round and try your luck another day. It’s also best to avoid weekends and holiday periods. Three other tips – wrap up warm, wear a hat – preferably an old one – and take a torch because it will be dark by the time you get back to the car park.
Although you’ll have a couple of hours to kill before the starlings arrive, there’ll be plenty more to see – lapwings, shovelers, widgeon, teal, kestrels, as well as more elusive rarities such as egrets, glossy ibis, marsh harriers and bitterns. As the light starts to fade, though, all eyes will turn to scan the sky for starlings coming in to roost.
The Starling Hotline will have given details of where they roosted last night, and, although the chances are that they will return to the same spot, there’s always a possibility that they won’t. Even if they do, they may decide to drop straight down to roost. Seasoned murmuration watchers will have many tales of fruitless waits for the birds to turn up, and they are well aware that, if it’s too cold, wet or windy, the birds will dive into the shelter of the marshes as quickly as possible.
If you’re lucky, though, you’ll witness something defying description and almost certainly exceeding expectation – hundreds of thousands of birds seemingly metamorphosed into a single organism controlled by a vast and infinitely playful intelligence, a shape-shifting veil rippling, surging and pirouetting through space at breakneck speed, yet with consummate grace. You may even, as I was on one unforgettable occasion, find yourself in the eye of a Hitchcockian whirlwind, with the light squeezed out of the sky as the birds cluster ever more densely, hurtling ever lower, as they prepare to roost, with a noise like that of a mighty waterfall.
At such times, it is hard to believe that starlings are on the list of Britain’s most endangered birds. Yet even murmurations on the Somerset Levels are a shadow of what they once were, while mass urban roosts like those at Temple Meads seem gone forever.
As their meteoric rise in North America suggests, however, starling numbers in Britain could, given the right conditions, quickly recover. Sadly, there seems little indication that those conditions will be fulfilled any time soon, or that the damage done to the ecosystem which supports starlings – along with much else – will be reversed. As awareness of the magnitude of what we have so nearly lost grows, though, it can only be hoped that the tide will start to turn.
