Starling

Available for over a year

Every Autumn vast numbers of continental starlings migrate here to take advantage of our milder winters. Huge flocks of up to a million birds or more swirl over their roost sites before settling down for the night. These impressive gatherings, called murmurations, are both remarkable and inspiring as Brett Westwood discovers as he visits a reed bed in Somerset with Tony Whitehead of the RSPB. Brett also gets to grips with the physics of how the birds avoid each other in flight and hears from a sound artist who uses the patterns of starlings on a wire as musical staves. Beethoven was impressed by the starlings ability to mimic his music, while Brett meets a man whose starlings accompany him on the piano. First broadcast in a longer form on 6th June 2016 Original producer : Sarah Blunt Archive producer : Andrew Dawes for BBC Audio in Bristol.