Just a short drive away, there’s a picturesque harbour where redshanks huddle on the sea wall around high tide, waiting for the mudflats to reappear. With brightly coloured orange-red legs, they are one of the UK’s most common and distinctive wading birds.
Out for a coastal walk last weekend, sure enough they were there again, along with some smaller dunlins. This was great to see but I really wasn’t expecting to get a taste of one of nature’s great spectacles, even if on a small scale. However, when a couple of passers-by spooked the dunlins into flight, for an all-too-brief moment they twisted and turned, their wings glinting silvery white in the low winter sun.
This was a dunlin murmuration and in larger flocks it is an extraordinary sight - a bit like a starling murmuration but with shimmering shapes and colours thrown in. My first encounter – albeit only on film – was at a Cumbria Wildlife Trust wildlife workshop at their South Walney reserve, near Barrow-in-Furness. Here, one of the presenters enthused about the displays sometimes seen at the reserve and showed a video called ‘Dance of the Dunlins’ by Doray Productions, with a huge flock drawing elegant patterns in the sky.
Redshanks on the Solway Firth
As when fish swim in huge shoals, this behaviour is thought to confuse or deter predators, which for dunlins include peregrine falcons. Computer simulations suggest that there is no overall leader and that birds follow just a few simple rules, maintaining a set distance from their closest neighbours. If a predator is spotted, the avoiding actions then ripple through the flock, making it seem to move as one.
Although there were no sightings that day, I’ve since seen several murmurations around Morecambe Bay and the Solway Firth while out coastal walking and watching tidal bores. Perhaps the best though have been in the Liverpool area, where the Dee and Mersey estuaries are both home to huge numbers of wading birds in winter.
On one trip, strolling along the beach near the mouth of the Dee, a flock of birds started approaching along the shoreline, perhaps startled by some windsurfers in the distance. I thought that if I stood still they might pass right by and soon after was treated to an extraordinary display. In addition to the shapes in the sky, two ovals flashed briefly on then off and the flock was two-toned for an instant, white on the left and dark on the right.
Dunlins near the mouth of the Dee Estuary
That was a chance sighting but when researching a travel guide to the Mersey Estuary I wondered if I could use the tides to help things along. More than 60,000 dunlins are counted here in some winters and I’d previously seen other types of waterbirds startled into flight as the Mersey’s tidal bore arrived.
Looking at reports of bird sightings, Pickerings Pasture seemed to be a likely spot, one of several reclaimed industrial sites around the estuary which are now scenic waterside parks. However, I felt a bit foolish waiting with a camera at the ready as people passed by, with nothing out-of-the-ordinary to see. Then, just as the light was fading and it all seemed a big mistake, thousands of birds took flight, their wings flashing white then brown-grey. Ironically this seemed to be due to some fright other than the tide arriving, but the result was the same nonetheless.
So, if you enjoy coastal walks in winter, the dance of the dunlins is definitely one sight to watch out for along with that of another UK waterbird, the slightly larger knot. I’ve since made the pilgrimage to the RSPB’s Snettisham reserve on the Wash, one of the best places to see knot, but that’s another story; see Spectacular Britain for more details.
The film (by Ang Lee) of 'Life of Pi' has a colony of animatronic meerkats – according to the 'making of' feature, these were programmed with a very simple algorithm where each virtual meerkat reacted to the movements of nearby meerkats. The result is swirling 'murmuration' movements.