Starling Murmuration at Neumann’s Flash : 10th February 2016
We were visiting a friend in Ellesmere and our return journey was going to bring us back home as the sun went down. It had been a beautiful, clear day – unusually – so we had the idea to try for the mumrmuration of Starlings at Neumann’s Flash that I had been reading about on the Machester Birding web site.
We ended up parking in the usual spot for Neumann’s Flash around 4.45pm and then walked down the length of the flash, past the first blind on the left and on to the gates at the end. Instead of turning right as we usually do with the birding groupo, we went through the gate and stood on the bridge that runs at the narrow end of the flash.
By the time we got there it was about 5pm and as we stood there we saw a spectacular murmuration of Starlings. One recent estimate gave the numbers as 650,000 birds and from our position the sky was completely full of Starlings behind us, in front of
At first Starlings began to gather is small flocks, settling on trees and the power lines at the far end of the flash until, when a sufficient mass had been reached, they all started to form one or two huge intertwining flocks. After a while they started to fly lower and we could then hear the swooshing of their wings; eventually they all came to land in the small reed bed to the right of us. At first it seemed as if they were simply heaped ten (or twenty or thirty) deep on top of each other and then, in the course of the next 15 minutes or so, they seemed to spread out more evenly across the reeds sometimes making a sound like the breaking of waves on the shore. Even then the mass of birds looked more like a gigantic nest of ants than birds – a truly astounding thing to see. It was pretty much over by 5.30pm or so although the birds were still re-arranging themselves among the reeds when we left.
As we were walking back down to the car, we overheard some people saying that it had been the best murmuration yet. People also said that the roos sometimes moves over to Ashton’s Flash.
By the time we were done we were pretty cold and in need of a drink and some loos so we went to “The Salt Barge” just before Lion Salt Works on Ollershaw Lane for some refreshment and a chance to think about the fantastic spectacle we had just seen – brilliant !
Map : Blue : where we stood. Red : the reed bed that the birds came down to roost in.
