Wednesday’s Bird is the amazing Starling:

– Starlings are bold noisy birds who like to hang around together, chatting.
– They are mainly black with white speckles, but if you look closely you can see flashes of shiny metallic green and purple in their feathers.
– They have quite big feet and so walk about a lot.
– They are omnivorous, which mean they eat all kinds of things, including seeds, fruit and insects.
(I always see them in the car park at Silverburn shopping centre. I think maybe they wait there to pick up scraps of food dropped by shoppers….)

– At night just before they go to bed, Starlings gather together in huge flocks and do something REALLY AMAZING!
Click on the green link and watch this video to see what they do:
https://youtu.be/M1Q-EbX6dso

Flying around in groups of thousands, the starlings move together like a giant swirly black cloud, making wonderful patterns in the sky! It is one of the great sights of Nature! It is called a Murmuration – a great word. Can you say “Murmuration”…?

Mark Making Challenge:

If you have any black paint and some cotton buds, you could try dipping a cotton bud in paint and dabbing it on paper to make a picture of this amazing sight. Or just use a pen, pencil or crayon to make dots and create a murmuration of starlings or any other pattern you like.