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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

how many...erm...European Starlings have you seen? (1 Viewer)

Q@Spurn said:
I'm not sure how many I've seen. Let me have a guess. About four hundred I reckon.
Click to expand...

In the mid-1980s, in the vineyards of eastern Austria, the Common Starling assemblage was at its height. Our group carried out many counts, the highest total of a single roosting assemblage being 3-5 million (Count the legs and divide by two...:-O! Seriously, we worked out just how much space 1000 roosting birds appeared to occupy), arrived at by each of the eight of us making three separate count estimates, discarding the top and bottom six (out of 24) and being left with the quoted range. When the roosting mass (in a sweetcorn plantation) took flight, the noise from the wings was seriously loud, but it was then we realised that we had probably undercounted by a huge amount!

Mass flocks or colonial nesters can be intimidating to anyone trying to count them, but there are useful techniques to help!
MJB
 
Several million on the Somerset Levels maybe six or seven years ago. Flock after flock of an estimated twenty to fifty thousand rolling across the fields to join up and start swirling in the sky before diving into the reeds...... I've never seen anything like it anywhere in the world. Just awesome.

It didn't immediately dawn on me, but you start to realise how many flocks have come past you: twenty, thirty, forty times twenty to fifty thousand and pretty soon you're talking real money!

John
 
Farnboro John said:
Sadly no. Or perhaps... not yet. John
Click to expand...

John,
It's superb! I've been there (in various seasons) 18 times. We even have bicycles there to explore the largely flat landscape that is the western end of the great Hungarian puszta...:t:
MJB
 
i remember big roosts in leeds/bradford/huddersfield as a kid but then the local councils put measures in place to deter them! now roosts are attractions it doesnt make sense!! even a small starling roost can be stunning. just watching the symmetry of the flock is one of natures wonders
 
The first birdforum meet in Slimbridge in 2003 there was around 4000,000 Starlings! Stunning It was a clear evening. Watching the Sprawks and Peregrines going through them was amazing,
 
We have a couple of hundred in Bury town centre although I probably should not say this as Bury MBC are unlikely to be sympathetic. Anyway, it was enough to tempt a peregrine into having a look and not something I expected to see when standing in Market Street outside Pic's Bar a few years back.
 
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