Our very own murmuration

In previous years I have gone all the way to Gretna in south east Scotland to see a starling murmuration.  This year the starlings have come to me.  These birds have been building in numbers over the past couple of weeks and have been putting on a great show in Gosforth Park Nature Reserve, as the starling flies only a mile from my home.  I went to watch yesterday, along with dozens of others who packed the hide.

As the sun goes down it all starts slowly with just handful of birds.

Then hundreds more join in.

And the group begins to swirl.

Then thousands more arrive

And they begin to dance.

As the light begins to fade they swirl back and forth across the sky.

The mass of starlings gets lower and lower and some begin to drop into the reeds.

Finally they all pour down from the sky.

And then all too soon the show is over and all we can hear are thousand of starlings in the reed beds, chattering about what sort of day they have had.