Yesterday I was sitting at my computer when I heard the unmistakeable sound of birds chirruping in a tree. Except there are no trees on that part of the garden. Investigating this further I went out to the west side of the house and immediately identified the ‘culprit’: flocks of starlings in the trees there as well as more in the tree by the Barn next door. We often see small flocks of starlings in those trees on winter evenings, pausing for a while on their way down to the roosting beds at Ham Wall. But yesterday there were far more than usual and, as I watched, numbers swelled further and noise levels soared. The birds were busily flying back and forth between the two sets of trees and the trees themselves were becoming blacker and blacker as the starlings took over. The chirruping was non-stop.

Suddenly that chatter ceased entirely. Dead silence fell for perhaps half a minute and then every single bird on every single tree took off and headed south towards Ham Wall. All that could be heard was the sound of hundreds of wings.

Then silence.

Each and every bird had gone