Here’s a school of thought about starlings

I was woken early the other morning by the sound of starlings.

They’re not the quietest of birds at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. Apart from the continual shouting and screaming, they were landing on the roof above my head and stamping around on the slates. Then some decided to land on the gutter outside the bedroom window, which is made of aluminium, and scrape their claws against the metal.

I got up, I hadn’t a lot of choice, made a cup of coffee and went outside to find out what was going on. The birds’ behaviour was quite odd. There were 60 or 70 of them and they were taking off from the roof and a tree beside the house and flying about 50 metres into an uncut hay meadow where they landed. They immediately took off again and flew back to the house.