Starlings take flight over River Shannon in Ireland - VIDEO

Where I grew up here in the US, there used to be a couple of large flocks of starlings that would gather outside of DC in the suburbs. When they did, there would be citizen's meetings to decide whether to use firecrackers or birdshot or poison to get rid of them; frequently, the trees were simply destroyed. The bird droppings messed up people's valuable cars and the children would get bird droppings in their hair or on their clothes. Yes, sometimes they were loud, but no louder than the noise of human animals, hollering as they left bars. I miss the different large flocks of birds. (Seagulls chased away many smaller birds, but peregrines have begun to roost in the city, and they will eventually chase away the seagulls and pigeons. Treasure the large flocks of birds in Ireland and protect them, following nature's rules. It's sad that the weak weakest birds often die, but death at the beak of a hawk is much more merciful than slowly starving. Mama Ginnty is right about hanging laundry when birds are near in large numbers. One problem we had, at least when I was a kid many years ago, was that even when we only had our usual number of birds around, they'd eat the mulberries off the wild mulberry trees. The birds' resulting guano would stain most things it hit. Thanks for a lovely video (and the others that have been posted since this one).

About ten years ago, I saw such a gathering of starlings in Portumna on the Shannon. At dusk, I noticed a narrow column of birds over the churchyard flying south that just kept on coming for about thirty minutes. Then they began to wheel and ascend and eventually they made their way down the lake.

They come to my place once or twice a year, maybe a few hundred, stay a few days only, but the chattering goes on all through the night, flying around in droves is a wonder because they never seem to collide with each other. I just make sure not to hang washing out to dry for a few days as they are messy little beggers, but wonderful to watch.

Fantastic

The one holding the camera has good reflexes and succeeded in capturing the continuous movement well in the video. Can anyone estimate how many birds are in that flock?

Thanks for the nice video

A familiar sight all over Ireland though not in the vast numbers captured here,years ago they were a familiar sight in Dublin city center coming in to roost in O'Connel street,there was a line of trees where they used to roost for the night