The other day, I heard a sound that was new to me in nature. I was out on an island in the Thames Estuary. As evening drew on, I was watching geese on a bank by the side of a creek. Above me were telephone wires strung between poles.
I did not particularly notice the starlings at first. They came flying in and settled on the wires, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in packs. These are the go-getters of the bird world: energetic, pushy, vulgar, dressed in spangled purple.
I began to give them full attention. Gradually the wires started to resemble thick black cables as more and more arrivals somehow squeezed themselves into the throngs already perched there, wheezing, clicking, whistling, and chuckling as they do. The wires swayed as birds kept on landing. There were hundreds of them now.
