The starlings, they are still here, just about

(This was written two years ago about a trip to see starlings on Valentine's Day. It's a bit more poetic than the normal posts. At the bottom there is some footage from that day with music by White Tiger, so you can actually see the birds I'm writing about for once.)

16^th February 2010

  

Before sunset, on the way home, we remembered our plan to go and see the starlings on the pier. It was a unseasonably sunny day, which would surely lure the birds out on a murmuration trip.

As we approached the pier we struggled to see any sign of the birds. We almost turned back but then Rose saw some high above the middle of the pier, a small cloud of them, only visible when they turned towards us a ripple of density.

So we continued towards them.

People stood in our way: friends unmoved by the spectacle behind them: small talk, small unthreatening obstacles, only small delay. The other Valentines couples are oblivious of foraying nature; they are on the pier for different honours.

At the moment the weather alternates between one day sunny, bordering on warm, and one day rainy, windy and cold; but when there are three nice days in a row, the starlings will fly away back to Norway. If it’s getting warmer here then back home it should be getting warmer too, but this place, this England can be confusing; there can be a day of glorious sunshine but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s Summer yet or that the day after will be as nice. But when there are three nice days in a row, then surely they will be safe to go back.

Small puffs of collected animals linger and twist. If they were one entity connected by fibre and bones they wouldn’t achieve such smooth and perfect morphisms.

In flight their formations are profound and perfect but when they land, they land on each others’ heads, they bicker for space, push and scramble inelegantly and noisily on the arcade roof.

And then the sun goes down and they go to bed below the pier.