Plumstone

I have had problems blogging recently so installed Google Chrome as recommended. Its slower than a slow thing in reverse... any ideas?... anyhow good to meet up with J&J yesterday at Fishguard Harbour. It was probably the first time I have heard a GND call other than in films etc. I dropped in to see Jack Donovan at Withybush (who is recovering well from a bout of pneumonia in ward 11 if anyone wants to visit him). He told me about a GND which someone handed into him which he put in the bath and which kept him awake all night with its howling!


After seeing JD, I went to the starling roost at Plumstone/Roch and watched from near the abattoir. Before the first starlings arrived a ring-tail hen harrier flitted in and out of view out on the moor and then a big heavy female Goshawk came lumbering in off the moor to the plantation.
It seemed a few thousand starlings had arrived from the opposite side of the plantation as I missed them coming in, but they performed a few gyrations above the trees with brief views of some raptor stirring them up. But this was nothing but a taster. They started coming in from the north east, more and ever more. I was trying to keep up with a rough count and then another stream started coming in from the east. Did I say stream ? more like a torrent , black swathes in the sky as far as the bins could see! and then even more from the south east, and then even more from the south, ribbons of many thousands of starlings several miles long. I gave up counting. Millions no doubt, but I gave up on any meaningful estimate.


They all kept on coming, sweeping into the aerial maelstrom above the plantation, millions of swirling wings whooshing loudly, stirred and re-stirred by hunting raptor sorties. Here a Peregrine, there a Gos' several Buzzards and with a Raven cronking maniac laughing at the craziness. A single bird got separated and was snatched by a Buzzard in mid air, a Peregrine winged off up and up and then stooped back into the fray... For a few moments a Gos' sat bemused on a treetop before plunging back into the general mayhem. As the night took hold and last trickles of starlings slunk in to the murmuring wood, more Buzzards seemed to be following them in. Safety in numbers perhaps, but the numbers also attracting the danger.
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I have seen a few Starling roosts over the past forty years or so but this one takes some beating , not so much for the gyrations but just sheer numbers and also the variety and numbers of raptors they attract. I think the raptors attentions may have something to do with the lack of really flamboyant protracted shows that I have seen elsewhere but this has to be, minute for minute, the mos texciting birding spectacle I have seen anywhere!