Murmurations of starlings certainly are a sight to behold

IN Timoleague, west Cork, where the famous 13th century abbey overlooks the sea, there may be seen, these evenings, one of the most extraordinary displays of coordination and swarm behaviour in nature, a murmuration of starlings, says Damien Enright.

The birds, some ten thousand in number, arrive west of, and above, the village in small flocks that coalesce to form a single giant flock sweeping across the sky in shape-shifting patterns, now rising into the void in a moving pillar tall and broad as Nelson’s column, now compressing into a barge broad as a container ship sailing the sky, now flattening into a pancake half a kilometre long and half a kilometre wide.

A dedicated local birder, Peter Wolstenholme, standing on a bare patch of ground, found himself engulfed in birds rocketing past him and around him, the lower strata of the dense flock inches only above knee level.