Murmurations

The leaden sky over Closson Road offers short shrift to an already sombre day. Nor do the grey fields give up any comfort; over there a gathering of starlings travel between the maples and islands of silver birch. I watch and guess at the bird numbers that tear through the heavens like smoke from a chimney. The brigade showers into the cottonwoods, where a cacophony of pops, whistles, whirrs and zzzts – their song- is for all to be heard. Then like a shotgun blast, as if on command, they explode from the trees: a mob on a mission. I watch as the avian cloud bobs and turns and weaves over and under, in dizzying form. Towards Benway road it’s as if a milewide kite wobbles in the November sky, and I still can’t figure out why they call a pattern of wintering starlings murmurations: Tough word to spell even. Same mystery as to why a pack of crows is called a murder.

With their glossy black plumage speckled in white, and their gift for mimicry, the starling is not on the list of favourites for many humans; the bird’s group behaviour and reputation for raiding the nests of songbirds puts the ‘biker birds’, as they are sometimes called, near the bottom of the conservationist’s list. In fact they’re classified under ‘Least Concern’, something analogous to a ‘zero star’ rating. Yet…yet some folks like to have them around. Starlings hang out with cattle and other livestock in the fields and keep vermin in check. They’re built for it. They have a conventional jaw structure instead of just a plain old bird beak. This enables them to jam their noses into the ground and pry the dirt open, surprising the hell out of any subterranean insect or mole.

Believe it or not some blame Shakespeare for the problem of starling populations: Seems like a group called the American Acclimatization Society had a brainstorm. They figured it would be brilliant to bring into the U.S. every bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s scripts. Well now the playwright had a fancy for bird metaphors and the like. In fact Shakespeare mentions some 600 avian species in works from Romeo and Juliet right down to Henry 1V. No small matter; no small bird count.

So the story goes that one sunny day in 1890 the acclimatization folks let go of 100 European starlings in Central Park in New York City. What a party. They had such a good time they repeated the round the following year. Some acclimatization! There are now 200 million starlings in North America today; maybe another reason the birds are also referred to as a ‘weed-bird’.

The theory is that starlings fly in tight formation to protect themselves against predators like hawks or peregrine falcons. They create a bigger picture to intimidate the enemy. In Rome, on a winter’s evening 5 million starlings enter the city in search of warmth. A starling will tell you the three basic rules of flight: Move in the same direction as your neighbour. Remain close to them. Avoid collision. The birds align with the seven closest to them; they see best out of their side view, and, moving at the speeds they do, you want to believe it when they say to pay attention.

The starling formation is not homogeneous, being packed tighter in the flock’s centre than at the outer edges. Starlings take turns in position flying front, sides, back. The outer edges of the flock are most vulnerable if attacked, but, seeing as how starlings are a democratic kinda species and all, everyone gets a chance to fly the outer edge. Fair is fair.

Now about the peregrine: it is fond of the surprise attack plan and starts way out of view and then soars right into the starling flock. The peregrine counts on this 90 per cent success rate formula over the effort of tracking down the lone flying bird. This is one of the disadvantages of group behaviour some species will mention.

But more than all of this, the starling displays are so complicated, flying in perfect synchrony, wheeling and turning at sharp speed while avoiding contact with its neighbour, that it makes them an ongoing focus of study. They have a fan club: physicists, aeronautical engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists and, not the least, biologists love them. Unlike ducks and geese, the tight flight pattern does not gain starlings the advantage of airlift. The birds have a reaction time of under 100 milliseconds, fostering the belief in ‘thought transference’ or telepathy. That certainly moves the lowly species up a notch.

The trail now lies in dusk, obscuring the gravel bed at my feet. I yank down my hat brim and watch as the aerial ballet of starlings with their iridescent plumage repeats. It is the stuff of poets; more than that, it makes for wishing that one could fly; take part in the dance, the murmurations of fall. Soon the daylight hours will hold for another mile longer.