With starling numbers still tumbling, Kate Bradbury is determined to make her garden a haven for these acrobatic birds
Some of the starlings that dance around Brighton Pier at dusk spend their days on the rooftops above my garden. They whoop and whistle atop television aerials and chimney stacks, fly about a bit. Then, a couple of hours before sunset, they become noisier. They seem to call to each other, egg each other on like friends texting before a night out. Impatiently, little groups fly from TV aerial to TV aerial, one or two slowly building up to six or seven. The whistles and clicks become louder, the flights become bolder; swifter somehow, as more join and the momentum builds, as they impatiently wait to get going. Then, suddenly, they’re gone - whoosh - to the Pier. Each little gang from Brighton and Hove’s many rooftops and TV aerials, joining together for the big dance in the sky.
If you walk along the beach before sunset you can see them on their way. Their dark bodies bounce like charged telecom wires, shadowing across seafront buildings in the fading light. On the journey of two miles or so, the starlings join together, meeting other gangs from other rooftops. Once, on my birthday, I was treated to a night in The Grand Hotel, made famous for the bombing during the Conservative Party conference in 1984; on the fifth floor our balcony was starling height, and we watched, champagne in hand, with the sun setting over The West Pier, as groups of 10 or 20 or 200 dashed to the party from all directions, calling and heckling to each other as they flew. Finally they came together in flocks of several thousand, moving through the sky in tremendous synchronised ribbons, contracting and expanding as one, a bigger more majestic being, a heartbeat pulsing above the city. If you stand on the Pier and shut out the noise of arcade games, you can hear the starlings whoosh past you, a million wings beating in symmetry like wind rustling the trees. Stand close enough and you feel the stormy blast generated by their bodies on your face. They roost in the bowels of the Pier, beneath your feet. They never shut up, chatting and clicking as they rest, while their friends keep on going, refusing to let go of the night.
Related: Diary of a wildlife garden: the robin's return | Kate Bradbury
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