Starling Flock

Yesterday the clocks went back, that now means that the sun sets now at five in the evening here. I went to close the curtains and spotted a flock of starlings grouping together in the amorphous ball that they form. There was about one hundred plus in this group, and while they were not yet ready to drop on their roost, it was interesting to see.

Now as some of you folks will know, starlings form this wonderful aerial dance, grouping together for protection before descending onto a reed bed to roost. As I am only a mile from the river, I am guessing that there will be a reed bed close by and the flock I saw will be only a small part of what will be a much larger flock. Therefore I will try and see if I can work out where the roost is as the sight will be worth filming.

Also these roosting flocks are a great place to see raptors. When I have watched these events before, I have seen Sparrow Hawks in numbers at these roosts trying to grab a late supper. This is why the starlings gather in such numbers, to avoid predators. As the shear numbers mean that it is almost impossible for a predator to focus on a single bird.

While the local roost will not be as large as others, I visited one where there was an estimated half a million birds, it will still be worth seeing as seeing a thousand plus birds in one single flock overhead will still be something worth experiencing.

With this in mind I went out looking to see if I could locate the reed or sedge bed where the starlings could be roosting. While I did not find the location or see the gathering flock of starlings, I did spot one of the Red Kites at a distance. What was amusing was the five corvidaes that were trying to chase it off. They were expending a lot of energy just to keep up, while the Kite was gracefully gliding, with only the occasional wing beat.

I may have to look further up the river for the starling roost. While coming home, I was told that it looks like the otters have started to return. As my regular reader knows they move to a different part of their range during the summer to avoid people and particularly people with dogs. So I will try and find a quiet spot on their range so I can film them. It looks as though I will be busy this coming winter.