Murmuration communication
Church Cove to Poldhu Cove, Cornwall
A murmur became a commotion as word spread on social media and in the local news.
There’s a new place to see a starling murmuration on The Lizard peninsula. And this one comes with a café and car park – nature’s drive-in movie theatre.
There are just one or two at first. The early birds.
Gradually, more arrive in twos and threes, fours and fives, from north, south, east and west. Some hang around the fringes, the bolder ones go straight to the heart of the group.
And then, as the shades of grey in the winter sky grow ever darker, this human flock falls quiet and looks to the sky. It’s show time.
I’ve never seen a proper murmuration, so we’ve taken an undulating, slipping and sliding trudge along a coast path muddied by days of rain from Church Cove to Poldhu Cove. From the beach at Poldhu, the cove funnels into reed beds that thousands of starlings have chosen for their winter roosting spot.
To be honest, I still feel like I haven’t seen a proper murmuration. This isn’t the full-scale spectacle promised online. It’s a little like turning up for an FA Cup tie and finding the managers have picked weakened teams. But it’s entertaining and impressive nonetheless.
Just as the spectators did, the players arrive in ones and twos, threes and fours, then bigger and bigger groups until there is a constant flow up the valley, following the stream that empties into the sea behind us.
The murmuration stretches and gathers, stretches and gathers, like a sticky dough being worked by a baker.
In Denmark, this is known as sort sol, or black sun, because the crowd of birds blocks out the sun. To me, it describes the huge, flickering black ball they create – it could almost be a single, solid object.
As it arcs south-west towards the clifftop site from where Guglielmo Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio message in 1901, communication must be rippling throughout the group. But how?
Scientific thought on the subject has moved on from telepathy to individual birds’ lightning-fast responses to the actions of their seven closest neighbours as they come together to befuddle predators then huddle down for warmth.
Not that predators are a starling’s biggest problem. As astounding as a murmuration is, just as astounding is that there was a 53 per cent drop in the population between 1995 and 2020 as starlings tumbled onto the UK’s ever-growing red list of endangered birds. The fall is as much as 80 per cent if you go back to the 1980s, with just 15 per cent of fledglings surviving their first year. Intensive livestock farming gets the blame for starving the rural population of the insects on which their diet is based.
For a moment I think the mass will swerve round and over our heads, but they hug the clifftop before ducking down into the reeds and settling for the night. Show’s over.
Basking sharks seen on this walk: 0
Total basking sharks seen to date: 0
I will never not be amazed by watching this!