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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ppedro" data-source="post: 1756347" data-attributes="member: 14696">This reminds me of something similar i witnessed at a previous residence in West Charleton, South Devon. The evening of January 11th 1997 was a little drizzly and foggy, very poor visibility. At 18:30 hrs i heard a strange commotion outside and went out and was surprised there was a flock of very noisy starlings, number unknown, flying around as if in circles ( could not see them ). by 19:00 found 3 dead on the road outside. The noise continued and i went back inside. I had to go out in the evening but on returning just after midnight they were still flying around sounding panicky. When i next looked out at  06:00 the mist had lifted a little and there were no signs of the birds. Looking around i picked up 30 corpses from the road, there were probably many more in  the surrounding gardens. I would liken what had happened to a fall of desperate birds at a lighthouse. At the time no birders i spoke to could recall anything similar away from a lighthouse and some non-birders later told me that the same night there were lots of starlings flying around Kingsbridge, around 2 miles away. My theory at the time was as follows. It was a cold winter and i thought maybe these birds were part of a cold weather movement  from the continent and not normally wintering in south Devon. At the time there was a very large Starling roost at Slapton Ley around 4 miles away. If these birds had recently arrived in the area perhaps they had tried following local birds to the roost , lost contact on the way and become tired and panic stricken in the poor visibilty and not known where they were, almost like being at sea. Thats the best i could come up with anyway and nobody at the time had any better idea. Obviously this is a completey different scenario to the Somerset incident but i thought worth mentioning.</blockquote>

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