Quarries provide winter refuge for starlings

Local and overwintering migrant populations finding shelter in active and restored quarries 

STRUGGLING starlings have been finding refuge from the cold in an Oxfordshire quarry.

Starlings, as with many other well-known birds, have suffered severe declines over the past 25 years, resulting in them being categorized as a red list species by the RSPB. Nevertheless, they remain one of the UK’s most common birds, with local populations boosted by large numbers of migrants arriving each autumn to overwinter.

Starlings spend much of the year in flocks, accumulating in particularly large numbers during the winter. In the late afternoon they group together, swarming into cloud-like formations (known as a murmuration) before swooping down to roost in habitats such as woodlands and reed beds.

Always looking to exploit new areas, it seems that starlings, along with other wildlife, are getting wise to the benefits that both active and restored quarries can provide.

On a recent visit to Smiths Bletchington’s Gill Mill Quarry in Oxfordshire, Carolyn Jewell, manager of the Nature After Minerals programme, a partnership between the RSPB and Natural England, said: ‘I was treated to a fantastic spectacle of small flocks of starlings flying in from all directions, with numbers in their thousands.

‘They were putting on a show as they grouped together and danced across the skies before descending to roost in the reed beds that have colonized the silt lagoons.’

And it appears that Gill Mill Quarry is not alone, with up to 20,000 starlings accumulating at RSPB/Tarmac’s Langford Lowfields Quarry in Nottinghamshire, a further 10,000 at Hanson’s Ripon Quarry in Yorkshire, and a large roost estimated at 20,000 reported at Aggregate Industries’ Warmwell Quarry in Dorset.

‘Quarries really are providing a refuge and important overwintering habitats for this familiar yet struggling bird, up and down the country,’ said Ms Jewell.