It was a fine February morning when I heard a loud chatter on the Copperpod tree that grew besides my home. Listening to bird calls in the morning is nothing new to me, and I now know that birds are most active in early morning and late evenings. But this time, the chatter was louder than normal. I glanced from my window and happened to see birds that were new to me, and I had not seen these birds before on that tree. I took some snaps of those birds, and a quick search on the internet gave a surprising name - Rosy Starling.
The sight of a Rosy Starling on that tree - not one, but I presume them to be around 10 individuals - sent me into waves of excitement. Why you may ask!!! Owing to the fact this bird is not endemic to India, but comes to India from far away Central Asian countries to spend the winters here. So the birds that I was watching from my window was a migratory bird.
The constant chatter of those birds was something that was unusual to me, and I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was seeing a migratory bird for the first time in my life. They were the vocal of all the birds that I saw on that tree, and their calls silenced all other bird sounds.
For the whole month, I would see them from my window seat, but the next month I did not hear their calls, so I knew that they had flown off, back to where they belonged, and would not see them again on that tree.
Rosy Starling Murmurations
Rosy Starlings are known for its murmuration, and for those who do not know what murmuration is like, see the image shown below, and you will come to know in an instant, what words cannot express. And, as they rightly say, "a picture is worth a thousand words".
It is also so true that you cannot express what a murmuration is like. In simple terms, a murmuration is a flying pattern in which several thousands of individual birds co-ordinate their movement and fly in sync with each other, so that when you see them, you feel like seeing a cloud changing its shape in the sky.
Study says that Rosy Starlings form these murmurations when they see a threat approaching them, such as a predatory eagle, or a hawk, which might seem a threat to them. Murmuration are so wonderful to look at!! But stop to think of it, and what seemed to you as a unique event happening in the sky, is a phenomena that even science and naturalists cannot decipher.
Just imagine, a huge flock of tens of thousands of Rosy Starlings changing their direction in a split second... never thudding into their immediate neighbour, never for once, crashing headlong into other individuals... imagine at what speed do they pickup the signal of diverting their course, changing their flying pattern with the ultimate of precision!!
It's beyond our imagination to grasp the perfection with which the Rosy Starlings do such acrobatics in the sky.
Copyright © 2021 Abhijit Pandit
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