Thursday 30th October
At around 4.35 pm I noticed a large number of starlings on the electicity wires near the northern end of Aberleri fields. Many more birds were wheeling around over the fields before flying over the Ynys and landing in the pasture just west of the Leri boatyard. At one point the restless black band of birds some 15-30m wide spanned length of the boatyard. 40,000 birds is probably a conservative guess-timate.
Eventually the flock lifted and flew back over to Aberleri, and began to settle in the reeds beside the Leri at around 5.05pm. Part of the flock flew around for a further 4-5 minutes before decending to a separate strip of reeds a short distance along the Leri borrow pit.
I'm unaware of any previous starling roost here although there was a roost in the willow scrub beside Searivers caravan park in the ealry 1990's.
Mike Bailey