Wall Village, Northumberland.
There isn’t anything particularly remarkable about this late afternoon in mid-March, driving along the B6320 between Bellingham and Hexham, past dog-walkers and sown fields waiting for spring warmth, like everything else. Daffodils hang unopened on the roundabouts and the hawthorn hedges are still a tangle of bare nests. I’m just following the evening traffic beaming home, a trail of red lights in convoy.
But descending the hill towards Chollerford, I can already see the beginning of the starling murmuration over Wall village, a distinct liquid stain hovering over the fields, like a bee swarm in bold. I’m surprised to see any activity as early as this, as the evenings are beginning to stretch out now and dusk is still some way off. I had wondered if it would even still be active, now that we’re heading towards spring.
I pull into a layby outside the village, where all winter groups of people have been parking up at dusk to witness the spectacle. Today I am the first to arrive and everything seems very quiet as I clamber out of the car and lean over a stone wall to see if there is any movement. But already small flurries of starlings are appearing over the fields and it seems a concentration is starting to form around some tall trees on the crest of the hill which has become their communal roosting site.
Soon the flock re-emerges in full view, looping high over the fields, visibly increasing in size and strength as new arrivals weave effortlessly into the mass. It is fast billowing into a shape-shifting body, a black cloud swirling beneath cloud. With magnetic urgency, even more birds are continuing to arrive from all directions, sucked into the aerial dance.
It’s impossible not be swept up in this whirling vortex, wrapping the sky in ever bigger wreaths of smoke, as if puffed out from a genie’s bottle. The sheer quantity and density of birds that are congregating and the fluidity of their flight patterns are breath-taking. The murmuration is steadily gaining in momentum, invisibly ballooning to form one huge pulsation, a flowing body of sooty acrobatics being pulled back and forth, in and out of itself, now one way and then another, in twisting folds of synchronised movement across the sky. More cars are starting to arrive too, faces peering eagerly from windows, to catch the first sight of it.
As the light fades further, the murmuration is concentrating closer to its roosting site. Walking up into the village, I can see it weaving backwards and forwards around the copse, a spinning top gone wild over the rooftops and homeward bound traffic. One minute it is gone, out of sight, and then it reappears directly overhead and I’m craning my neck and peering up at a massive sweep of birds filling the sky. I can hear their fluttering wings, a collective beating that gently brushes the air as they pass over, so orchestrated in its movement that it comes in a single flush of sound, like an outbreath. And followed a few seconds later by a smattering of white droppings dotting the tarmac in a pungent white shower, streaking my coat. I now understand why I have seen people standing under umbrellas. Digging around in my pocket, I find I have an old plastic bag and for once in my life I don’t mind if I’m standing by the roadside with a bag over my head.
It is hard to know if the murmuration has actually reached its peak, but it has now become a huge aerial stunt over the heart of the village, swirling back and forth in ever tighter circles, an undulating frenzy without centre, turning inside and out in perfected, yet seemingly spontaneous synchronicity. It reminds me of clips of film that I have seen of those biblical swarms of locusts, a kind of abundance that defies the imagination. And yet here the starlings are in their many thousands, fulfilling an instinctive need for protection from predators, executing their wisdom in one exhilarating, pure movement.
It’s not hard to understand how the sheer size of a murmuration is all about safety in numbers, with groups of starlings from the same area gathering together in a single mass, for protection, warmth and the sharing of information. After all, it would be hard for a fast moving predator like a peregrine falcon to penetrate such a dense flock in order to target a single bird. What is less easy to comprehend is how a murmuration gathers in such intensity, how it loosens and thickens to accommodate a precise alignment of flying space, allowing each bird to be sheltered within the moving whole. And without any apparent stress, or without one bird bumping into another, like the fractals of a Mandelbrot set, a self-generating, intuitive, aesthetic brilliance, infinitely complex in its fluidity.
In the village green I come across groups of fellow skywatchers. Standing rooted to the spot, faces lifted to the heavens, they speak in hushed tones, as if under some kind of reverential trance, and as if speaking normally, might in some adverse way, break the spell. Snatches of conversation drift towards me, beneath the rush of overhead wings.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
It’s a wonder there hasn’t been an accident before now with people driving and seeing this for the first time.”
“I love it when a bird of prey moves through and they try and really concentrate together.”
“Isn’t nature marvellous.”
There is something humbling about standing together under this magical canopy, sharing its beauty and power. And I’m heartened to think that for all that we know is declining and extinguishing in our tender biosphere, nonetheless people have cared enough to turn out this evening to watch a great collective event of a particular species, something happening right beside us in the midst of our human occupied space, outnumbering us in their many thousands, and transforming what we think can be possible. Touching our fragile lives, lifting us into something certain and wondrous.
I’m glad, too, to be temporarily harboured alongside others. freed from our earth-bound, downward-facing trance of endless screen watching, all our compelling dependence upon information, technology and social media. And instead, making time and space to simply stop, look up and receive the miraculous news that is the evening sky. And joining with complete strangers, who like the birds, by word of mouth, have mysteriously manifested from the surrounding area in small groups, to be entranced by the movement of birds.
And, not least among the many wonders taking place here this evening, to sense a tangible willingness and patience, to stay looking up long enough as the sky closes, to follow the spectacle through to the very moments of its conclusion. And to stand, open and receptive to all that is being written into the dusk with its highly evolved message of connection, survival and unity of purpose, all its extraordinary, babbling conversation. And witnessing together how, at some mysterious prompting, thousands and thousands of starlings can decide, in a moment of directed implosion, to let go in a glorious, collapsing funnel, pouring as one final collective dive into the waiting trees.
