Them cr*ppy Starlings

It was on my 'to do' list. Find the local Starling roost.

Problem? I knew it was outside my birding area. When I moved back, I deliberately set myself the task of sticking to the south shore. During the autumn I would pick up some nice movements of Starling in the first couple of hours of the day, heading west, and I was always tempted to say 'migrants'. But the problem was I'd have similar numbers east in the evenings.

And then they'd continue into the winter. I tweeted a few months back about the numbers passing The Brickfields in the mornings, guaranteed close encounters. And if I watched from Raspberry Hill, out over Chetney, I'd see probably the same birds back, flying out of my self-set recording zone.

Infuriating. I pondered a few times last winter that the answer could be Murston, I knew it was hardly birded nowadays. I was close. And to add insult to injury, I was extremely close when I watched Chetney from Raspberry Hill. Now if I had just turned around...

Monday evening had seen me on Basser Hill, watching Barksore. Some nice stuff going on, highlight probably Chetney's Golden Plover, which had moved off the frozen grass to the slightly more broken harrowed fields.

But then, as I walked off the hill, I just, just glimpsed what could be the tail-end of a murmuration breaking the skyline for a nano-second. Probably about four kilometres away, but, yup, there it was again- a murmuration.

I bleated on to a friend about it, who had made the mistake of once saying they'd like to see a murmuration, plus they owned a car, plus I knew they were free Wednesday afternoon.

And no need to hunt the site down, it just so happened a few days before the site had broken, as 'just behind Morrison's distribution centre', via the twittersphere.

Looking at the OS, it could only be Cold Harbour Fleet, so fifteen minutes before sundown we were stood on a mound at the end of the road by the fleet. I was immediately annoyed as the sky was full of Starlings, but about a kilometre and a half south over Castle Rough. There were just groups of fifty to a hundred Starlings going in to the Fleet, with a small murmuration of about 400 birds above it.

Patience.

I realised the Rough lot were gone, and then suddenly a wave passed over, with an amazing sound of pifp, pifp, pifp, going off all around. We were right underneath, in a guano rainstorm.

The next eight minutes were sublime. No words for it. How taken was I? I didn't even bother to try to count, that's how taken. Well worth slipping over the count-y line for.

My friend was blown away by it too. Though when we got back home, I did feel the need to promise I'd clean their car the next day, just in case I ever needed to get them to go along with one of my subtle hints again.