Murmuration is the specific name given to a flock of Starlings. Why not just flock? Only when you see them massed in their thousands, tens of thousands, turning in unison with no perceptible hesitation, do you realise that ‘flock’ is inadequate for this most remarkable phenomenon. The sound of their amassed wing-beats as they fly overhead is as much felt as heard.

How do they create such extraordinary, evolving, three-dimensional shapes in the sky without ever crashing into each other? Apparently someone has worked out a computer program that creates nearly identical formations, simply by inputting optimal maximum and minimum wingtip distances, alongside flight speed. So much for the how. The why is not answered there, but even this can probably be accounted for via Dawkins’s theories on the extended phenotype. And maybe he’s right, but the poet inside me howls and rebels at such a thought. Just go and look at one of their extravagant displays and tell me there is no joy unaccounted for by biological imperatives. I am not a believer in intelligent design, but neither am I a reductionist.