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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Natural Histories

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Nature that has had a profound impact on human culture and society across history.

Nature that has got under our skin and profoundly impacted human culture and society across our history.

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Natural Histories: Starling

Starling

BBC Radio 4 - Natural Histories, Starling

Brett Westwood explores our fascination with the starling and their winter murmurations.

A murmuration of starlings is one of our great British wildlife spectacles and never ceases to inspire and amaze as Brett Westwood discovers in a reed bed on the Somerset Levels.

Every Autumn vast numbers of continental starlings migrate here to take advantage of our milder winters. Huge flocks of up to a million birds or more swirl over their roost sites before settling down for the night. These impressive gatherings, called murmurations, are both remarkable and inspiring as Brett Westwood discovers as he visits a reed bed in Somerset with Tony Whitehead of the RSPB. Brett also gets to grips with the physics of how the birds avoid each other in flight and hears from a sound artist who uses the patterns of starlings on a wire as musical staves. Beethoven was impressed by the starlings ability to mimic his music, while Brett meets a man whose starlings accompany him on the piano.

First broadcast in a longer form on 6th June 2016
Original producer : Sarah Blunt
Archive producer : Andrew Dawes for BBC Audio in Bristol.

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