please empty your brain below

I was right...for once.
Nice pics.
I saw a similar murmuration in Algiers. I had not realised that starlings lived so far south. As a child in Ireland I also saw flocks of starlings and they were discouraged from roosting in my grandfather's woods for the reasons you mention.
Christopher
www.christopherbellew.com
You get murmurations like that in many cities - the birds commute in for the night as cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside.

That said, if there are extensive reed beds the starlings will collect over them and settle as the sun goes down. It is a sight well worth seeing, and the reed beds don't mind the accompanying mess!
I always thought "murmuration" was just an invented (or at least obsolete) word used to fill up the lists of obscure collective nouns. But it looks as if some people really do use this word in real life. It certainly is an amazing sight, anywhere, and probably deserves its own word. I did enjoy the description and the pictures.
Beautiful photos, a mumuration of starlings is on my 'bucket list'.
My son is off to Rome on Friday for a short break, He last went to Rome on a school trip when he was studying GCSE Latin.
Perhaps my memory is playing a trick, but I seem to recall similar flocks of starlings in London and other UK cities in say the 1980s? Where have they gone? Rome?
I agree with Andrew. I remember flocks of starlings in London. I seem to recall St James's Park being a roosting place. They would also nest in trees on the street, for example a group of trees in Great Suffolk Street near where I worked in the 1970s.
We still get big murmurations in Ireland -- there was an RTE radio documentary last week about one which occurs nightly in Belfast.
Bradford and Leeds used to (may still have) these huge flocks of starlings. I remember being 'bombed' in the centre of Bradford back in the early eighties
Fortunately the starling population has fallen 90% in the UK which has allowed other species to flourish. Populations of many types of finchs and tits in particular have increased significantly now that they are not being out-competed for food. The starling is so aggressive that it wipes out many other species when it gets too numerous.
Murmuration is a Springwatch/Autumnwatch word much used by Chris Packham et al.
Yes, but *why* has the number of starlings fallen so dramatically?
As regards London I don't have any particular recollections of starlings, but - from a time when my commute included a walk from Gresham St to Cannon St - I still have fond memories of a row of trees along Walbrook which provided a nightly roost for [what seemed to be] the City's entire population of pied wagtails. You'd rarely see them during the day but there would be hundreds of them returning to the same roost at the same time each evening.
The trees, sadly, are long gone... victims of the major redevelopment between Cannon Street and Queen Victoria St.
I remember the massive starling gatherings in Central London, especially in the early 80s. The view of their evening roostings around Leicester Square was incredible and beautiful. I am from Manchester, where we had thousands of starlings, but I had never seen such a congregation as the ones I saw in Central London.

Sadly the authorities decided to get rid of them somehow. I seem to recall they used recorded hawk sounds, and real hawks, to deter them and drive them away. At the same time they were using the same techniques, and poison, to reduce the pigeon population in the area. Sometimes I go through Leicester Square and think of that amazing display, completely lost to us. Sad!!










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