Today ‘Storm Imogen’ hit us on the South coast, so today is also the day when I find out if my theory is right about the altitude of starling murmurations. The light is already failing when I get to the beach and I wonder for a moment if it’s just too windy at 60+mph winds for them to do anything but fly straight to roost, but then I realise the sea is covered in a black carpet. It’s as if I’m watching a fast and granular oil slick spreading back and forth across the water. The waves aren’t that high. I think because of the direction of the wind they’ve been almost flattened out, but the starlings are flying so near the sea that the lowest ones still get lost behind the wave crests. How do they do it without falling into the sea, and with so many brothers and sisters flying so close above them? Yet I’ve never once seen one washed up on to the beach. It isn’t the most extravagant of starling displays, but to fly at all in such high winds, let alone so precipitously, when only a few inches lower would spell certain death to non-swimming birds so tiny, still takes my breath away.