Watching Birds – The Starling

As more people discover the therapeutic benefits of watching birds it’s taking flight (excuse the pun) as a popular and accessible form of what’s been called green or eco therapy. Put simply it makes us feel good.

While not a substitute for professional mental health treatment, watching birds can be a powerful complementary activity. It reminds us of our connection to the natural world, offers an escape from daily stresses, and provides a unique way to boost our mental well-being.

Today while having a mid-morning break, and with no real thoughts about what I was going to write about, a small flock of starlings flew into a tree outside my window; creating  such a din, as they squabbled, whistled, chattered and chortled amongst themselves, I could hardly hear myself think.

Just imagine this multiplied by thirty!

So there that’s it I knew what I was going to write as the start for my occasional series on the mindful practice of watching birds – I would write about starlings. You don’t have to be a birdwatcher or birder or twitcher to appreciate their sheer beauty and perfection of form.  And you can see them almost anywhere.

A common visitor to our gardens, parks and city streets, they have a beautiful purple-and-green sheen to their black feathers, and are dotted with lots of little white spots like tiny stars. Just look at them in this stunning painting by Jane Tomlinson …

They are famous for their wintry aerial displays, called murmurations – when massive flocks can be seen wheeling over our towns, villages, farmland and coasts. An awesome sight – the Red Arrows of the bird world! 

Here’s one of the best descriptions of a Murmuration I know. Take your time reading it; out loud if you can – let the words talk …

The air begins to quiver and fill with dark scribblings. They’re starlings, thousands of them homing in on their ancestral swamp on their nightly communion. They stream in from every direction, joining then breaking ranks and careering off again. Suddenly they become plasmic, a dark aurora, a single pulsing organism…       They swing up to the sky….. they skim the reeds in folds and falls of black. They fill out parabolas and helixes with a symmetry  you don’t expect from living things. Then suddenly they fall into the reeds. It’s mysterious and transfixing,  still beyond understanding.

From an article by Richard Mabey

Now watch this mesmerising video and be amazed …

Oh I should have said that looking at pictures of birds and listening to their songs or reading about them can also make us feel good. Yay!

So read this again and look at the paintings by Jane Tomlinson more closely and immerse yourself in the video.

And if you are able, go outside and watch birds for real. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a starling or sparrow, pigeon or something more exotic – a kingfisher or peregrine falcon. Maybe you only catch a glimpse; but for a moment it’s pure joy. Or ease of heart as Richard Jefferies, the Father of English Nature Writing, called it.

Notes and Credits

Please respect the Intellectual Property Rights of the author and those of the artists whose work is used in illustration. Do not copy, reproduce, download or plagiarise this work in any form without express written permission from the individuals concerned. Individual copyrights are cited below.

The two paintings of starlings are by Jane Tomlinson (c) 2023 and used with permission. Jane’s ‘natural’ medium is watercolour, but she also uses acrylics, acrylic inks, gouache and printmaking using the drypoint technique. Vibrant colour is a cornerstone of her work. She’s made numerous paintings of starlings over the years; adoring their beautiful shape and size and their gorgeous plumage – iridescent purples, blues, greens pinks with yellow chevrons at the tip of each feather. You can see more of Jane’s fabulous work here  …  The Art of Jane Tomlinson  

The audio clip of a starling was made by Lee Alder and has been downloaded from Xeno-Canto used here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4 Licence.

The YouTube video of Starling Murmuration was made by Marco Valk of Nature & Wildlife Films who holds the copyrights and music licence for this beautiful piece of work. You can see more of his work on his YouTube channel here …Marco Valk – Nature & Wildlife Films

About The Author

Clive is first and foremost a birdwatcher or watcher of birds as he prefers to call himself. Retired now he continues to watch birds and has taken to writing haiku about them. He has had poems published in many of the leading haiku journals and recently has self published two groundbreaking digital ebooks of his poetry. You can read more of his work in his online (PDF) collection ‘hidden by clouds’

And finally a huge ‘thank you’ to Change Therapy for inviting me to write this series on the mindful practice of watching birds.