07 March 2024 , 12:29
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Crowds of bird watchers have been flocking to a rundown multi-storey car park to watch stunning starling murmurations.
Tens of thousands of the birds have been returning every night to the Kingfisher Shopping Centre in Redditch, Worcestershire. Local residents started posting videos of the murmurations on social media since they started their displays in January. Their breathtaking aerial acrobatics have attracted hundreds of people who watch the birds from the top of the shopping centre.
Shop worker Angie Wilson, 30, said she first noticed the starlings while walking home from work one January evening. She said: "It was just incredible, the entire sky seemed to go dark with birds and the noise was something else, like a screeching that just got louder and louder. The way the starlings all moved together as one giant shape was mesmerising. I just stood and watched them for ages."
"Since then I come down most nights when it's not raining to watch them do their thing. They've made their nests in the trees below the Kingfisher. It's quite a thing to have such amazing wildlife in the middle of a busy town. It's getting very popular and some nights there are dozens of people here. I think the car park is as full in the evenings as the days sometimes."
Crowds of people watch a murmuration of starlings on the roof of the Kingfisher Shopping Centre car park in Redditch, Worcestershire (SWNS)The starlings come together mid-air above their roosting sites and perform what the RSPB call "mass aerial stunts" for a number of different reasons. Firstly, they do it for protection, with predators like birds of prey finding it difficult to single out individuals from among the flock.
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They also do it as a way to keep warm in the colder months and to exchange information with one another, including about good places to find food. The birds will begin their displays in the early evenings, just before dusk, as the night begins to draw in.