Wild Isles: starling murmuration in BBC documentary reveals as much about people as it does about birds

By Samuel Shaw, Lecturer in History of Art, The Open University

I’m sitting on the sofa, watching starlings. There are thousands of them circling above and around me, swirling into spectacular, ever-shifting shapes. They curve and loop in a hypnotic dance, merging at times into thick knots of winding blackness.

The sound is equally astonishing: a wave of wing beats that pulses as the starlings snake across the sky. This compelling communal performance, known as a murmuration, culminates in the act of roosting. It’s the grand show put on before the starlings settle in for a winter night.

It takes some effort or luck to witness a murmuration…

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