Starling murmuration.jpg

The following is a detailed report by Andrew Hart, who led a group of us on a day trip SE of Calgary on 15 March 2014. Adding it mainly as a reminder for myself. My photo shows just a tiny part of the Starling murmuration of up to 10,000 birds that we were lucky enough to witness along one of the backroads. As you can see, some fields were bare of snow, though others still had a good covering of the white stuff.

"A beautiful spring morning. Temperatures rising from about zero to plus 10 deg C. Sunny all day and gentle breezes at most. Fourteen people showed up to enjoy this. The birds must have thought so too, because migration seems to have got a kick start today.

We started at the main entrance to Frank Lake, we walked down to the outfall and then swung back around the blind back to the gate.

On this swing we saw:

Canada Goose 2000
Tundra Swan 4
American Wigeon 3
Mallard 750
Northern Pintail 2000
Lesser Scaup 3
Common Goldeneye 100
Common Merganser 2
Bald Eagle 3
California Gull 60
Horned Lark 3
European Starling 500

The Canada Geese were mostly on the ground, in a wide arc stretching from the outfall anti clockwise to the left of the blind. The four Tundra Swans touched down on open water near the outfall, swam around for about ten minutes, and then flew away. The Pintails were more intruiging. When we arrived there were only 20-30 mostly on the ice near the outfall. But in the two hours we were in the area continual successive groups ranging in size from 20-30 to 150+ kept flying either in or by. If we counted every sighting I would have reported 5000 plus, but we think we saw some of them more than once (but hard to really be sure).

After a lunch break we drove on a long circuit of the area ending up at the Basin 3 carpark. We saw:

Canada Goose 300
Mallard 20
Bald Eagle 1
Great Horned Owl 4
Merlin 1
Black-billed Magpie 1
Common Raven 3
Horned Lark 6
European Starling 10,000

All of the Great Horned Owls were on nests. We first saw the Starlings when we noticed a black cloud swirling around in and above the field in the corner of Township 184 and RR281. Closer inspection revealed almost countless numbers of Starlings swarming around. They settled in the field (becoming almost invisible) then rose up and flew around. We suspect that at any time we were watching there were at least as many hidden in the stubble as we could see flying around. One of the transmission towers and several bushes were almost dripping Starlings. Various people in the group estimated 5000 plus, 10,000 plus and "10,000 is a very conservative number".

We left, and following a hot tip from Anne Elliott (about the Eurasian Collared Doves) stopped in at Blackie on our way back to Calgary. There we saw:

Rock Pigeon 24
European Starling 50
Eurasian Collared-Dove 6
Downy Woodpecker 2
Black-billed Magpie 2
Black-capped Chickadee 8
House Sparrow 12

A short video to show what a murmuration looks like, for anyone who isn't familiar with this phenomenon:

youtu.be/XH-groCeKbE