In William Wordsworth’s lengthy autobiographical poem The Prelude we be taught of the poet’s deep love for the pure world and his desire for nature as a companion all through life. His phrases from the textual content, “Ye presence of Nature, in the sky / Or in the earth, ye visions of the hills / And the souls of lonely places”, got here to thoughts not too long ago once I learnt of the return of the ‘murmuring’ starlings over Belfast’s River Lagan.
‘Souls’ of lonely locations these birds may be, however when of their hundreds performing spectacular shows, they rework the night sky with swish dance and type. Crowds gathering on the Albert Bridge to welcome the birds again to town’s skies should give credit score to the not too long ago fashioned Wild Belfast, a conservation physique which works to advertise and enhance biodiversity throughout town.
They had been chargeable for encouraging officers to cut back the results of sunshine air pollution from a brand new lighting system put in underneath the bridge, the place the birds roost, and which was regarded as partly chargeable for deterring them.
The starling’s old English identify, ‘stare’ or ‘steer’, ultimately turned starling and is utilized in Yeats’s poem The Stare’s Nest by My Window the place he invitations honeybees to “Come build in the empty house of the stare”.
It is over 10 years since I along with others from my local area experienced the joy of witnessing the aerial spectacle of a starling murmuration over a small woodland plantation, outside the village. During those winter months, small flocks of birds, prompted by fading light, were drawn to the roosting site, gradually joined by others before thousands began performing synchronised movements across the sky creating rolling shapes and curved patterns or, as Michael Longley describes, “a shape-Shifting bird-cloud” in his poem Starlings.
Each evening from November through to early spring, the birds arrived above the woodland to produce this piece of theatre for upwards of half an hour before descending in unison, to the seclusion and safety of the trees, as darkness closed in. Many speculate on how huge numbers of birds can move with such precision and speed without colliding and about the signals they use to trigger sudden changes in direction and pace. Ornithologists believe starlings gather in such large numbers to give a sense of safety and security from predators before they roost.
An example of this regular collective night roosting can also be found in Dublin’s O’Connell Street, by pied wagtails, the place the existence of a roost was talked about by CB Moffat (Irish Naturalists’ Journal, 1931) referencing a notice in 1929, by a WJ Williams that, “about a hundred pied wagtails were found roosting in a tree amid the noise of the busy traffic and in the full glare of the electric light”.
By 1934, the numbers had risen to 2,000, occupying two bushes. With numbers growing yearly, it was thought that by 1950, over 3,000 wagtails had been current, occupying three bushes. Such communal roosts are commonplace too with the crow household in noisy rookeries, and in heronries, each serving to to offer safety and profit to individual birds. This security in numbers expertise can be noticed when lots of of waders and wildfowl are pushed skyward by a looking peregrine or sparrowhawk alongside coastal mudflats.
The starlings have but to return to Dromore and carry out their aerial dance, nevertheless it’s encouraging to know locals and guests at Belfast’s Albert Bridge will proceed to take pleasure in one in all nature’s most spectacular sights, described by Longley once more as, “Heavenly riffraff flocking / Before they flap down to roost”.
