The morphing motion of flocking starlings is one of the UK’s most hypnotic wildlife spectacles. Julie Brominicks picks six of the best places to see them
01 ABERYSTWYTH PIER, CEREDIGION
You might hear them before you see them – a thrilling whoosh above Aberystwyth (Heol y Wig in Welsh). Clusters of people gather along the seafront, silently respectful, as the sky pales to lilac then deepens. Some 30,000 starlings swirl in from their coastal feeding grounds to roost beneath the iron-latticed pier.
02 DRUMHONEY HOLIDAY PARK, LISNARICK, COUNTY FERMANAGH
Belfast City Centre hosts the largest roost in Northern Ireland, but a new murmuration was reported in January 2022 above a caravan park at the edge of Lower Lough Erne. The lough contains 40 islands and is also home to wintering birds, such as scaups, great crested grebes, whooper swans and wigeons.
03 NEWPORT WETLANDS, NEWPORT
Keep watch for bearded tits and wintering bitterns at the largest wetlands in Wales, with a visitor centre, accessible trails and boardwalks. The reserve was created to counter habitat loss from the development of Cardiff Bay. The murmuration of about 50,000 is visible across the reserve, before the starlings drop into the reeds.
04 GRETNA GREEN, DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY
This mobile roost of about a million birds is usually seen just west of Gretna, on the border with Cumbria. The landscape here is sparsely populated, with forest, maritime and dairy pasture, coastal flats and estuaries. As autumn advances, keep watch too for whooper swans returning from Iceland.
05 WHISBY NATURE PARK, LINCOLNSHIRE
Regenerated sand and gravel quarries are now a mosaic of lakes, grassland, marshland, scrub, willow carr and a small oak woodland, whose winter migrants include goldcrests, redpolls and grey wagtails. The park boasts a visitor centre and paths from which to view the murmuration of about 10,000, billowing like smoke above the reserve.
06 ELLON, ABERDEENSHIRE
The River Ythan, a remarkably undeveloped estuary in the industrial environs of Aberdeen, is home to the town of Ellon, south of which is a 30,000- strong roost in Hillhead conifer plantation. Retired scientist Ron Macdonald frequently captures footage of the fluctuating shapes made when the murmuration is attacked by peregrines and sparrowhawks.
Boisterous and gregarious, starlings are a bit smaller than blackbirds with a dark, glossy plumage that glistens purple and green.
Sky dance
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall journeys to the Somerset Levels to witness huge winter flocks of starlings swirling in the sky as they come in to roost. Watch BBC Two’s Hugh’s Wild West on iPlayer