Hello All and what a year it had been so far.....!!

With the Starling Season upon us and with the current situation regarding social distancing and certain places around the country having various local lockdown measures we are changing this winters Murmuration Map .
We have seen that a couple of the Nature Reserves that feature on the Map have asked people not to travel distances to see the Starlings to help reduce numbers within the reserves. We have been requested to not activate some of these reserves and have taken to decision to temporarily remove these sites from the map.
If you are local to these reserves then please continue to add information to the Submit Info form and we will add that to our database when they are added back. 
We know that a lot of people will avoid these reserves with crowded narrow paths etc but there are a few great displays with huge open viewing areas like Brighton, Aberystwyth and Blackpool North Piers where not only do you get a great amount of Starlings coming to roost but there is a large viewing area for people to be able to spread out and social distance correctly. 
This brings us to an idea for this winter.... LOCAL STARLING SEARCH!! 
We think that this winter would give you the opportunity to search out the Roosts local to you.. 
If you do not know of any close to you then you could ask on your local Facebook Groups/Pages to see if they know of any locally, then you can let us know too.
We shall continue to monitor the situation as we go into the winter and see how the Map is working and what locations will need to be kept dormant for the time being. 
Please keep safe and take precautions... if there seem to be too many people consider moving on and coming back again at another time.
Thank you for now

​Glenn & Sarah

Well, where did that Spring and Summer go? 
Firstly apologies that not a lot of work up front on the website has been done and it still looks the same. I have however been working behind the scenes adding 'stuff' (non technical term) to various parts of the website to try to make it higher in the search engine rankings. We are gradually getting there.

Secondly, I didn't really use this Blog section much last season due to a lot of reasons. I have now decided to narrow down my other Social Media activities, mainly admin duties on groups etc so I can concentrate more on my own projects such as the Starling Website and map etc. 
With the #murmurationmap I am looking in to a custom marker in the form of a Starling silhouette to replace the Red marker showing sites as active. I have noticed recently that one Google Maps on my phone, the markers as still shown as white so they do not stand out as much. This seems ok via the map link on the website though. Technology eh?? 
I hope that if I change the 'Active' marker to a custom one then that should make it easier for people to see active roost sites.

Finally, here is a list of the reported active roost sites as of 20th October 2019. Please understand, these are the roost sites that have been reported to us, this doesn't mean that others near you aren't active at the moment. If you do have information about ANY roost site, active or otherwise, then please let us know via our Submit Information form. Thanks 

County Kerry, Nine Daughters Hole, Nuns Beach.
Cumbria, North Walney.
Devon, Slapton Ley.
East Sussex, Brighton Pier.
Hampshire, Market St Eastley.
Kent, Ramsgate Seafront.
Lancashire, Marton Mere Local Nature Reserve.
Norfolk, RSPB Titchwell.
Shropshire, Whixhall, Whitchurch.
Somerset, Dowlais Lane, Seawall Reserve.
Suffolk, Hen Reed Beds.
Tyne & Wear, Gosforth Park Nature Reserve.
Wales, Aberystwyth Royal Pier.
Wales, Cardiff Bay Wetlands.
West Sussex Worthing Pier.