Observers usually want to know not how it is done (because it seems almost miraculous) but why they engage in this kind of behaviour at all.Īgain, this has not been satisfactorily explained, though some suggested reasons are frequently touted. The question of how they do it generally takes second place, however, to the question of why they do it. It may have its evolutionary origins in the shoaling behaviour of fish it is also possible that the evolution was convergent, with similar behaviour evolving independently in fish and birds. The murmuration has no leaders: it is a team effort governed loosely by some inbuilt or systemic sense of rhythm or coordination. The physics of how they do it has not been fully explained there seems to be more to it than birds simply responding to visual cues from the seven birds nearest to them, as often quoted in explanation. It is an edifying and heartwarming sight and you cannot help but think the birds see it that way too. I would describe it as a flock coherently and intelligently swirling, ballooning, contracting, rising, falling, turning, flowing, billowing and merging, and never losing contact: the birds seem magnetically connected to one another, even when a group breaks loose and is lost for a while in an ancillary display of its own. The whole enormous gathering follows an unplanned itinerary with the birds using the roost site as a fulcrum to roughly circle round, covering several kilometres in just minutes. This happens repeatedly, with several flocks at times performing at once sometimes breakaway groups of just fifty or so birds keep on displaying as though they were still part of the group…and then rejoin. Satellite flocks peel off or are pinched off, but soon rejoin the main body, melding back in, somehow avoiding collisions. The seething, plastic mass of birds, writhing in the sky above the roost, is like an amoeba viewed under a microscope, pushing out plasma in foot-like protrusions that it then withdraws like a sea anemone retracting its tentacles. It can stretch like elastic, forming a narrow band that moves in a wave then reverts to a ball again. It can balloon, then contract into a ball rise, then plunge towards the ground or billow like smoke. The flock twists and turns in the sky like a huge shoal of fish in the sea. Flying at tree height or hugging the ground, they zipped in at speed, making a beeline for the plantation but then continuing to join the main flock.Ī murmuration is spellbinding. Presumably, given their numbers, the starlings were coming from locations anything up to sixty kilometres away, maybe more. In this respect it differed from murmurations of rooks and jackdaws I have seen, as these birds call continuously in the case of jackdaws their unbroken chorus of ‘chucks’ and ‘chacks’ sounds almost musical, an effect that may be intended or have purpose.Įven as the starlings began their manouevres, more continued to stream in from all points of the compass, in groups big and small, joining the main flock as it swirled above and around the roost across an area spanning three or four kilometres of rolling pastureland, an area of battlefield size in the days of yore. Within minutes it was passing overhead, a sea of small birds moving in silence except for the swishing sound of thousands of fluttering wings. Others were also there to watch: one man told me he had come from as far afield as Bray, Co Wicklow.Īlthough I arrived early, I failed to see the initial formation of the main flock: it was already very large when it materialised on the horizon to the south, so it must have assembled some distance away. I took up position at a point above it with a good view of the surrounding countryside. In Nobber (from the Irish ‘An Obair,’ meaning a place of work), their roost is a dense conifer plantation in a grassy hollow just south of the village. But before they alight, they perform spectacular aerial manouevres, in unison, for some fifteen or twenty minutes as the light fades.
![starling flocks flying starling flocks flying](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/14/article-0-13147293000005DC-169_964x635.jpg)
Since then, a murmuration observed on the shores of Lough Ennell in March 2021 was a similarly popular news item.Ī murmuration is a gathering of tens of thousands of starlings as they go to roost each evening at a favoured woodland or reedbed during the winter. This one had attracted a great deal of attention since the beginning of the year, even making it onto RTÉ’s nightly news.
![starling flocks flying starling flocks flying](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/flock-starlings-flying-sky-40567862.jpg)
![starling flocks flying starling flocks flying](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/flock-young-migratory-birds-starlings-flying-against-blue-sky-flock-young-migratory-birds-starlings-flying-against-195832602.jpg)
I went to Nobber, Co Meath, in February 2019 to view a Starling Murmuration and to try to understand what it was all about.
Starling flocks flying mac#
Coilin Mac Lochlainn reports on the winter phenomenon that is a Starling Murmuration