.jpg)
The autumn skies of Rome at dusk belong to the starlings. Lifting off from their plane-tree roosts along the Tiber river, they slowly gather.
A small flock flies about and is joined by another small flock.
Yet another joins them, and then another and they become a sky-high mob.
Seen from a roof terrace in central Rome, they resemble circus acrobats warming up for their finale with somersaults and arching pirouettes.
They are their own amusement park ride, dipping and soaring with switchbacks and loop de loops.
Hundreds and then gusts of thousands glide over the domes and antennaed rooftops.
Sometimes, when the birds fly low enough, you can hear the whoosh and a faint murmuring as they pass overhead.
They seem to be heading for a certain somewhere until they veer off in another direction entirely.
Claudio Carere is an ornithologist who has been watching the starlings in Rome since he was a boy."These gorgeous aerial displays, which include merging, splitting and turning, are all part of the collective anti-predator response," Carere, 41, said, "and they are effective in reducing predator success."
Starlings are not new to Roman skies. Pliny the Elder, a first-century writer, noted that by observing that starlings in flight, one could predict the future.
He also noted that Nero, the notorious Roman emperor, kept one as a pet.
Since the early 1920s, starlings have been arriving to winter in Rome in large numbers, with current estimates at 500,000.
They arrive in mid-October -- attracted by the city's warmth, safety and green areas -- and depart in mid-March, flying off to breed in Central and Eastern Europe.
Although the birds put on an entertaining display, not all the wingless inhabitants of Rome are applauding. The problem: excrement. Under the trees where the birds roost, the pavement and cars are covered in the stuff and the city of Rome has decided to take action.
With assistance from bird-protection enthusiasts, starlings' distress calls are recorded, amplified and then played back through loudspeakers in the hardest hit areas of the city.
The idea is to scare them away but this only works if it is repeated consistently; otherwise, they come back in two or three days.
Carere isn't bothered.
"Italians love their cars and they don't like them to be covered by bird droppings," he said.
"They only have to avoid parking under trees where the birds roost -- just like you wouldn't park where your car might be robbed."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: ABC)