halftwo
Wird Batcher
Rolling Starlings
Before the rain a female Sparrowhawk circled up, flapping and gliding with prey, to carry it towards her nest. As it started a creaking, croaking, clockwork song escaped from the paddock - a Red-legged partridge on the low wooden rail - a rare sound here.
Then it came like stair rods - slanted from the west on a blowing. In the meadow a hundred Starlings crawled across the grass, heads down and probing, as one. From time to time those at the back flew to the front to glean more than the leaders, and in this flat slinky fashion the herd progressed.
Inches above them a dozen or more Swallows, tails depressed and spread to slow their flight to nearly nothing, showing their silver-white spots, picked insects disturbed by the Starlings below. They flew windward, then swirled to the back of the herd to trawl again.
The two movements became one - Starlings rising briefly, Swallows dipping and swirling: a repeated pattern, which, from a distance was a single loose rolling ball across the rain-strafed grass. A sea of grass in which Starlings swam, and Swallows, Petrel-like, picked.
Once or twice false alarms sounded - sending Starlings up to flash in synchronised twists before falling back to the field, leaving unsettled Swallows to regroup and follow as the Starlings began pushing through the sward once more.
Before the rain a female Sparrowhawk circled up, flapping and gliding with prey, to carry it towards her nest. As it started a creaking, croaking, clockwork song escaped from the paddock - a Red-legged partridge on the low wooden rail - a rare sound here.
Then it came like stair rods - slanted from the west on a blowing. In the meadow a hundred Starlings crawled across the grass, heads down and probing, as one. From time to time those at the back flew to the front to glean more than the leaders, and in this flat slinky fashion the herd progressed.
Inches above them a dozen or more Swallows, tails depressed and spread to slow their flight to nearly nothing, showing their silver-white spots, picked insects disturbed by the Starlings below. They flew windward, then swirled to the back of the herd to trawl again.
The two movements became one - Starlings rising briefly, Swallows dipping and swirling: a repeated pattern, which, from a distance was a single loose rolling ball across the rain-strafed grass. A sea of grass in which Starlings swam, and Swallows, Petrel-like, picked.
Once or twice false alarms sounded - sending Starlings up to flash in synchronised twists before falling back to the field, leaving unsettled Swallows to regroup and follow as the Starlings began pushing through the sward once more.
