8th February 2016
Last year lots of people enjoyed watching the Starling murmuration over St Stephen's Street. The sheer numbers of birds, whilst not comparable to the larget reedbed roosts was quite enough to distract shoppers and people who usually wouldn't look twice at a bird. This year numbers have been building up, although varying day to day. Last week I photographed the flock on one day and counted the birds from my photo, counting 520 birds. This week the flock was visibly much larger - in fact it was difficult to fit them all in when photographing them. The strong winds meant that the murmuration was moving quickly and frequently spreading into a long ribbon of birds. Having just about managed to fit them all into a photograph a(nd after an evening of counting) I reached the total - 2134 birds! Of course this method isn't completely accurate (and there were probably a few birds out of shot), but 2130 is a reasonable estimate for the birds in the flock on Monday. Will it continue to grow?!
Murmuration in groups of 20 birds - this took a while!
On Saturday evening at 5.20 over Surrey St., the flock was mobbing a bird - through the bins it looked like a peregrine with a starling in its talons
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information. I've not seen anything hunting them personally, but I remember beeing told about Peregrines hunting the Starlings on occasion last year.
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