Jenny Brown's Point and Leighton Moss

Tales from the Stave: starling

I heard a chorus of birds and followed  to  find a flock of starling strung along triple wires between telegraph poles.  Dark shapes  like notes of music on a stave.   A stave of starling, that's my collective noun for them.  Plumage of subtle colour, sheen  and pattern.  Birds preening. fluttering  above and below the wires, then all off in a whoosh. 
A soloist sang close by in the reed beds, clear and insistent.  Forget the starling chorus, I'm the one.  

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At Jenny Brown's point the late-afternoon sun glossed channels and pools, colouring the waters of Morecambe Bay.  I could hear redshank and geese, with egret brilliant in flight. Flocks foraged on the shoals,  too far out to name.

Home again,  we listened to a Proms Concert: Vivaldi and the Bach Double violin concerto.  And in my mind's-eye those vocal and  volatile starling appeared as notes clustering about a stave of music,  dark notes against sunlit cumulus cloud.  Grace notes never to be repeated, flights of fancy.  So, a stave of starling. 
The fun of birding is non-conformity. Moments when birds do not accord with the field guide - neither in appearance nor behaviour.  They spring surprises-  seen once in a  lifetime.   I've never before found starling gathering on those telegraph wires over the track to the Leighton Moss sea hides, may never find them there again. I could never replicate the pattern of starlings perched, preening or scattering in flight.  Vivaldi's score for his Double Violin Concerto leaves the soloists a freedom for flourishes, grace notes.  Innovation and creativity, that's what grace notes are. 


The Shorter Oxford Dictionary for the noun Stave 

1. Thin narrow shaped pieces of wood which when placed together side by side and hooped form the sides of a cask or tub
2. Rod, bar or pole. Rung of a ladder. Cross bar to leg of a chair
3. Verse or stanza of a poem, or song
4. Music. A set of lines for musical notation.