World-class show by our starlings

OH TO be in Africa where the great herds of wildebeest are crossing the Serengeti and the Masai Mara on their annual migration.

Big cats and hyenas shadow the flocks, picking off stragglers. Crocodiles wait in ambush along the rivers. Vultures wheel overhead. Nature is a cruel mistress.

Few wildlife spectacles in our part of the world rank with those of the wildebeest, the caribou traversing the Arctic tundra or the storks and raptors circling in thermals before crossing the Bosporus or the Straits of Gibraltar. The gannet colonies at Saint Kilda and Little Skellig each summer come to mind but our great winter wildlife shows are staged by a more familiar, and slightly despised, bird; the humble starling.