Features

Starlings are the cheeky characters of the bird world, mimicking many of the sounds that they hear, their feathers a wonderful sheen of glossy purples and greens.

Starlings are well known for being gregarious and are sometimes seen as the locusts of the bird world as they appear in gardens and quickly eat the food! At this time of year, starlings can also provide us with one of nature’s best wildlife spectacles. During the winter our UK breeding population is boosted by birds from the continent. They live in small flocks during the day, travelling between feeding sites and gathering in daytime roosts, normally a place with good all-round visibility.

David Kjaer (rspb-images.com)

Then in the late afternoon all these feeding flocks, roughly within a 20 mile radius, join up to form progressively larger flocks before becoming a ‘murmuration’ of tens of thousands of birds in a winter roost site.

The vast reedbeds at RSPB Leighton Moss nature reserve in Silverdale are an ideal spot to see this starling display and visitors can often experience this amazing sight before dusk throughout the winter.

This year staff and volunteers at Leighton are running a ‘Starling Watch’ from Monday 17th to Friday 21st November 2008 from 3pm to dusk and are inviting people to come down and join them to look out for the starlings coming in to roost.

They roost every night in the reedbed but to see the spectacle it is best to watch out on a fine afternoon. Just turn up at the visitor centre before 2.45pm to be directed to the hide where the starling watch is taking place. It is a free event for all. Please telephone 01524 701601 or see www.rspb.org.uk for more information.