Joys of Winter

Bagitha... nice image: 'Scotlands special winter rust'.
Got up at 5.30 yesterday to watch a million starlings rising from their overnight roost... cold and windy but well worth it. After they had cleared the flattened red beds a great white egret flew in, unable to hide it was clearly visible.
There followed the most amazing display of aerial gymnastics by six or seven flocks of lapwing. Were they imitating the previous evening's display by the starlings now that the coast was clear? Each group flew into the distance only to return to the shallow water just in front of us, some wheeling low over the hedge against which we sheltered.

reed not red..... must have had colour in my brain after Bagitha's image!

Sky, earth and water - three beautifully depicted elements. Thank you bagitha.

I've never seen a rising of a million starlings. I know it's called something else but I don't know the name of it and I rather like the rising vision. That must have been awesome ogm.

ButternutIt was!
The noise they make as they fly is called a murmuration. The RSPB warden said that some people call a flock of starlings a filth! ( I'm not sure whether that was his little joke!)
I had watched them roost the night before so it was easy to find them again. They rose up into the air in two large groups, you could hear the noise before you realised they were ascending from the reeds. They flew directly over us which was when we heard the murmuration.

A sharp clear black night
A paper cut crescent moon
A sparkling, brilliant Venus
A juxtaposition of beauty.

Lovely Butternut I've just looked out of my bedroom window and that's exactly what I can see!

So a murmuration is a melody of rising starlings ........

OGM and butty, do you know Steve Palin's book A Dissimulation of Birds, which is a beautifully illustrated collection of the collective nouns used for birds. I've just looked up the starling bit and as well as murmuration, there is a chattering of starlings. I read something else that surprised me. After talking about the huge numbers of starlings in roosts (the book was published in 1998), he says: Starling populations, however, have not always been so healthy. At the beginning of the nineteenth century theri numbers were in serious decline. They are now fully recovered.

their

slip of the keyboard!

Just bought it (second-hand) on Amazon. Thanks for the tip.

Baggy and Butter May I recommend another beautiful bird book - The Bedside Book of Birds An Avian Miscellany author - Graeme Gibson. Quote - 'In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist Graeme Gibson has crafted an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humans and birds.'

Thanks super! I've written it in my little book that I keep with a list of most wanted books. (It's very long......)

I have that book too, super. It was a present from DD1 a few xmases ago. I read a little a day and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bagitha I had forgotten ' a chattering of starlings' and, of course that is just what they do before they settle down for the night and before the 'get up' in the morning.
The RSPB 'guide' did say that starlings are still in decline, mostly as a result of changes in agriculture such as the increased use of pesticides.
Last year they had six and a half million at this particular roost ( but it was a much colder winter here and in N. Europe from where many of the 'visitors' come.) This year they estimate a million and a half.
Butternut... love the 'melody of rising starlings'.
I have not always been a fan of this particular bird, they used to remind me of pompous little Methodist Ministers, strutting around and hectoring other garden birds!

Shafts of sunlight
dance through the boughs
of winter-bare trees
highlighting the delicate
lacey counterpane of snowdrops
clustered below.
The air is crisp and clean
the quiet punctuated
from time to time
with shrill bird-song
and the hushed whisperings
of lazy waves
caressing the stony shore.

Another picture and a peaceful one this time. Love the 'lazy waves'.

I made a foray down the garden today to give some crusts to the neighbour's hens and found the snowdrops flourishing and one lonely snowflake which is usually at least a month later than the snowdrops. The cornus mas, which has fluffy yellow flowers, is coming into bloom about a month early, and the rowans have red leaf shoots.

annobel, put them on naturescalendar! <suggestion>

I was in Brighton on Saturday with my grandson and as we walked along the boardwalk at the Marina the daffodils were flowering in front of the houses past the restaurants where people were eating out of doors. He had to feel the daffodils to make sure they were real!

Love the poem supernana!

Seventimesfive At one time I lived in Durrington [not far from Brighton]. Fancy daffodils being in bloom! The shoots in our garden are about 4" tall at the moment.

We have daffies in bloom in sheltered places roun here

four inches

I went out and bought a camellia to cheer me up yesterday. It is sitting outside the patio doors staring into the kitchen. White with pink veining and golden stamens.

JessM ...a bit like our cat...he's sitting on the outside mat staring into the kitchen. Black with butter yellow eyes!