The mesmerising murmurations of Europe’s starlings | Hacker News Reader

The mesmerising murmurations of Europe’s starlings

theguardian.com

49 pointssamizdis25 comments

I implemented a simulation (https://github.com/FL33TW00D/wasm-boids) of a murmuration after seeing one for the first time - they're truly amazing. Also a great way to try WASM & Rust.

Always reminds me of that unofficial "Hollow Talk" music video someone made [1]. Wish it was available in higher quality than potato.

1. https://youtu.be/Vy7yuj-UrNI

One with higher quality (not the same recording): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY. Youtube also refers to some other nice recordings from that one.

(There's also a video with intermediate quality, and otherwise distracting parts, but amazing formations too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRNqhi2ka9k / http://vimeo.com/31158841 )

Sadly I haven't found one with (just) original sound (no music).

These are so beautiful. One thing the pictures don’t capture are the vibrations that move through the murmuration—that is, the shifting phase synchrony of thousands of flapping wings. I’d love to get some footage to understand whether individual bird synchronize to the frequency/phase of surrounding birds, or just to the velocity of surrounding birds.

Here’s another great video: https://youtu.be/m6YDhVeW5Kc

If you get a chance to see this in person, ideally without many other people around, and even if it involves a relatively long trip, I highly recommend it. It's utterly mesmerising in person. (I can personally recommend the Avalon Marshes near Glastonbury in Somerset, UK, in December and January).

Working in Friesland, Netherlands, in the 1990s I used to see these flocks quite often - amazing sight. Sadly, they seem to have completely gone from the UK - I can't remember the last time I saw a single starling here.

Edit: I should say my experience is on the East of the UK - London & Lincolnshire.

There are plenty in and around Brighton and the South Downs, and as I mentioned in another comment, they're a common sight on the Somerset Levels - but having said that they do have a red conservation status in the UK, so it's clearly not all rosy for them.

> Sadly, they seem to have completely gone from the UK - I can't remember the last time I saw a single starling here.

Anecdotal, but they are present where I live (south coast UK). We have had multiple individuals including juveniles on our bird feeders in the last month. I had to reconfigure the feeders to stop the Starlings from eating everything.

More formally, this year's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch [0] put Starlings as the third most prevalent bird, with an estimated UK population of 1.8m, although their declining numbers make them a Red List bird. [1]

[0] https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/b...

Yes, here in Suffolk the starlings are demolishing all the suet we put out - I'm watching the family fight over a feeder right now.

We have the same in Yorkshire. Being the only people in our street that seem to feed the birds we bought a bulk pack of 150 suet balls in January - the Starlings are massing like crazy and demolishing all the food we put out. Maybe I'll give up the day job and sit there and fill the feeders :) They also love bird-friendly (no salt) peanut butter.

> Sadly, they seem to have completely gone from the UK - I can't remember the last time I saw a single starling here.

They've definitely not completely gone! I live in the UK (in the Surrey hills), and see ~30-40 starlings just in my garden multiple times a day every day, since the babies fledged a couple of weeks ago. They make an almighty racket squabbling over the food in our bird feeding stations. Even when I lived in outer SW London we'd get them regularly, up to 20 at a time. And I know that down Portsmouth/Southsea way there are so many starlings they're considered a pest by some.

Oddly enough, I was out walking on Wanstead flats in East London this weekend and commented just how many flocks of noisy starlings there were about. Not mumuration size (I go to Brighton for that) but flocks of a hundred or so.

What? Of course they haven't gone. You just actually have to be at a roosting site at the right time of year and day.

https://www.starlingsintheuk.co.uk/roost-map.html

Well, not my experience. Here in Lincoln, you never see any of them, and I do know what they look like.

I'm just north of you, and they are the most common bird in my garden. Perhaps there is something about Lincoln that they don't like? Though I can't imagine what, because it's a lovely place.

Oh well, perhaps my super power is starling repellence :) But really, I'd love to see them, but I don't.

Come and live in my house. I had two pairs of them nesting in my roof, plus chicks, until they fledged recently. They learned to tolerate me working in the loft, reinforcing ceiling joists. I left them alone and, eventually, they all flew the nest a week or two back. They're still hanging around outside though.

I've seen pretty large murmurations a few times in recent years (this is in East Anglia).

Those flying creatures in Half-life Xen levels were inspired by this

Starlings are highly invasive in the USA and these formations can be enjoyed there too -- I've read of Central Park NYC and Seattle both seeing them.

Cool story, until just recently, it was commonly believed that starlings were first brought to the USA in 1890 as part of a Shakespeare fan's project to introduce all of the birds mentioned in his works. But I just looked it up, and now it looks like scholars are finding little evidence for that story!

https://sites.allegheny.edu/news/2021/02/16/how-shakespeare-...

Enjoyed? Not for their sound. If you walk around a city at dusk as they are setting in, the sound is like loud static.

Interesting about it not being misguided enthusiasm for Shakespeare, though.

They are pretty, but also nightmare for us wine makers. They come every autumn just in time of harvest and they can eat half hectare of grapes in matter of minutes.

How do you prevent this from happening? Nets?

There are many ways: in past it was mostly nets and people walking around field and making noise when flock come close. Now it is combination of automatic noise guns installed inside the vineyard and even computer vision systems that aim flocks with laser pointers.

There many reports that the lack of insects made birds a greater threat for crops, compared to the past. [*]

What is your experience, would you concur that these birds were not as much as a threat some decades ago?

[*] Many reports also indicate that their number has grown, but that in turn could be a consequence of their shifting diet, not being anymore dependent on a naturally limited resource (insects) and now using a resource way more abundant (crops for human food). So the reduction of insect populations would have had this surprising two-steps consequence of raising the number of their former predators.

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