A natural spectacle on the Somerset Levels

Less than an hour’s drive from Bristol, sweeping out of the city on the South Bristol Link Road and then winding through smaller and smaller country lanes, you’ll reach RSPB Ham Wall on the Somerset Levels. The surrounding Avalon Marshes stretch for miles across the flat lands and are home to an incredible variety of birdlife, from water birds like herons, bitterns and great crested grebes, to aerial predators including hobbies and marsh harriers.

But at this time of year, in the short days between October and February, it’s a seasonal visitor that forms the biggest tourist draw: hundreds of thousands of little speckled starlings, who have flown huge distances across Europe to roost in the reed beds.

On sunny days, when they’ve all been out on the wing all day hunting in the cold air, they gang up in huge numbers and fly in tight formation – a murmuration – as the sun begins to set. This incredible behaviour is performed to avoid being picked off by predators, like a shoal of fish grouping together for safety in numbers. Their wings beat together, dipping and rising and swirling in mesmerising, sickening, dizzying patterns, until they all bunch into solid blackness and drop quickly into the reeds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEpHDSazEps

The starlings are a fickle bunch: cloud and rain ruffle their feathers and cause them to limp home in dribs and drabs, without any of the spectacular murmurating behaviour. They may come in just as the sun is getting low in the sky, or much later, as the light is turning blue with dusk. On one previous attempt to see them, we pulled into the car park at RSPB Ham Wall only to see the grey-black trail of dots whizzing over our heads, just too late.

Lesson learned, we left plenty of time on our recent visit, arriving in the early afternoon. We parked up (£1.50 for two hours or £3 all day), grabbed a coffee from the little RSPB shop to warm us up on a bright cold day, and headed out into the marshes. The marshes stretch out from both sides of the car park, with hides dispersed intermittently, rising above the water to allow visitors to observe the birds and wildlife with uninterrupted views. We consulted the map on the side of the shop, where you can also buy RSPB membership, to see where the starlings were roosting, and headed out that way, stomping in the puddles.

We crossed bridges and turned off the main drainage channel to walk deeply into the marshes on a raised footpath. We watched a great white egret pick through the shallows on long spindly legs, and observed a marsh harrier through a pair of binoculars – not essential for a trip to the wetlands, but they certainly help. As the sun dipped low over the reeds, a flock of iridescent lapwing descended in front of Glastonbury Tor, and we headed up to higher ground to wait for the starlings.

Up to a million starlings roost at RSPB Ham Wall in Somerset during winter

This time, we were lucky. Suddenly, we saw a shadow coming out of the Western fringe of the marshland, and the hum of a hundred thousand wingbeats rushed overhead like water as they circled us, rolling over to our right in the pink air. More reinforcements joined the party and at one point the entire hillside was blotted out by dark wings, circling wide over the marshes. They rippled and moved as one in the sky as we watched, breathless, but as soon as it began it was all over, the birds dropping down into the reeds as a single body.

As the light faded out and the final stragglers swooped in overhead, we tramped back along the muddy paths, past the reed beds now alive with hundreds of thousands of chattering starlings, squabbling for space. Catching one of nature’s most impressive spectacles right on the doorstep makes for a winter day out in the fresh air sure to chase any seasonal blues away.

RSPB Ham Wall is free to visit at all times. Dogs are allowed if kept to public footpaths. Between October 1 and January 31, the car park opens from 7am-6.30pm. Call the starling hotline on 07866 554142 to find out where they are roosting ahead of your visit.