Murmuring starlings or whispering dunlins?
It was twilight. The stars had faded away but it was not yet sunrise when hundreds of pairs of wings purred past my shoulder. What were they? Where had they come from and where were they going?
I was standing on the sea wall path with my back to the nature reserve. As these low flying birds flashed past from behind the sound was just magical. Had I been murmured at by starlings or whispered to by dunlins? In those few seconds, in the gloaming, it was hard to tell. Both can congregate on the reserve in their hundreds, so which was it?
I hurriedly snapped off a couple of photos as they streamed out across the flooded salt marsh and hoped this would give me the answer.
My snapshots turned out to be typically blurry but not too blurry to identify a fling of dunlins.
I saw them again later in mesmerising flocks, making endless shapes across the skyline and wind turbines. There were in fact over 1200 of them!
Was it because the high tide was right up to the sea wall that they sought refuge in the reserve? After all, the reserve is an excellent place to wait for the tide to ebb!
That’s really interesting. On Saturday evening (about 3pm) we noticed an enormous flock (1000s) over Avonmouth/Portbury and took them to be a murmuration of starling as they were doing the characteristic swoopings and were quite high in the sky.