A Murmuration of Starlings

On and around a condemned building in the Rue de l'Orillon, a group of starlings is currently putting on a performance each evening at dusk. But for how long?

Around an hour before sundown they begin to gather. Not in trees or on rooftops but instead on the metallic branches of an giant television antenna. A clandestine and somewhat dangerous-looking installation, it nevertheless provides the perfect look-out spot across the city.

They arrive in groups of 15-20 birds, feral packs that have spent the day scavanging across different parts of the city. The birds jostle for position on the arial, before setting out on their mass pre-bedtime swooping, twisting display.

There are perhaps around 200 birds in this group, and although the spectacle is not the "thickening, deepening and blackening" show that the poet Samuel Coleridge once observed, it is nevertheless impressive in this urban setting.

In more rural locations, groups of starlings - known as a murmuration - can regularly include several thousand birds, creating incredible shapes in the sky. Quite why or how they do this is not known, although it is a phenomena that has long been researched by biologists, and also more recently by physicists, aeronautical engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists.

Looking up at these birds, it is pleasing to think that there is something mysterious happening in the skies above this most ordered and cartesian of cities.

These group flights serve a social purpose, but like people in a city, there is surely also an element of 'safety in numbers'. Even in Paris there are aerial predators - notably Peregrine falcons, and a flock is more difficult to attack than an individual bird. It is also possible that they are warming themselves up before bedding down for the night.

The grace and beauty of this group activity is all the more surprising when we consider the bird as an individual. The starling is an ordinary looking bird, with greasy oil-spill plumage, but it is also the most streetwise of birds, and entirely suited to city life.

Most astonishing of all is the bird's power of imitation. To protect territory or to ward off predators, the starling can change its voice, imitating the songs of other birds, or even telephones and other electrical equipment. What's more, they often seem to do it for fun! The starling is the city spiv, a genial con-artist.

Although some birds will stay in Paris year-round, most will head off to breeding grounds, generally in the north and east of Europe. These flocks, and the accompanying aerial displays, start forming around November but when this particular group gets back together again later this year, their 'tree' will have gone. 

The building housed migrants too, mostly families from Africa, the tree-like antenna bringing them images from countries far away. It stands empty, bricked up, and demolition is scheduled to begin shortly. The residents have been rehoused, but has anyone thought of the starlings*?

*An RSPB survey in the UK found that starling numbers in the country had declined by nearly 70% in recent years.