The flocking season

I had a lunchtime meeting with the architect who is re-designing the council's Lansdown Hall. We met at his home on the edge of the village of Minchinhampton which gave me a chance of stopping on the common again, only a few hundred yards from his house.

I immediately noticed a group of starlings swooping down to peck at the grazed grass, before flying off together to another patch. I presumed they were looking for worms but it might have been any insect they could find. By the time I had walked across to where they were eating, they of course had changed positions again and I turned around in a circle to let my eyes take in the whole panorama.

On the edge of the common, a large old house had a line of big beech trees on its boundary. This was where the birds I had been watching now went, to join the gathering flock of starlings swooping in big groups around the treetops. As one, they alighted on the top branches and I could hear them chattering loudly.

Not long after, they suddenly took off again, circling the tree before flying away for another munch. This view of a small section of them in my picture was taken as they were just taking off again. I am reminded of the enormous flocks that will start to gather at sunsets in the next weeks. I might even go down to Slimbridge in the Severn Vale to capture that event.