It might be time. The younger starlings have been talking about leaving this summer. After our broods have fledged and we’ve shown them the air, they say we should take the risk and go. We can’t stay here living under the pier in Brighton much longer.
Those of us still here aren’t from migrating families. Our feather-lines go back generation after generation on the British and Irish Isles. Most of us have families who’ve lived under the pier for decades.
We used to visitors join us every winter. Tens of thousands of other starlings would merge with our roost from October until March. They’d travel over from the continent, flying 2000 miles from the Baltic forests and northwest Russia when the air started descending from the arctic. It’s all we knew. All we needed to know. The ebb and flow of our flock with the seasons, dancing as one in the evenings at sunset. But there aren’t enough of us to gather in murmurations any more. We can’t reach the numbers we need to harmonise. The last visitors we had were two winters ago.
Every season’s a struggle now. We’re mainly getting on with seeds and grain brought over to the pier by humans when the tide’s low and the weather’s settled, happy to share what little they have. There’s barely a grub in the soil, let alone an insect in the air. It can rain for months at a time and howl a fierce wind in shapes we don’t know how to fly in. Sometimes, freak gusts will blow us off perch into the sea while we’re sleeping.
There are a lot fewer humans around these days. A lot of them have moved up the hill or left the city all together. The seawall and wave-breakers they built a few decades ago hold off the worst of the rising sea, but spring tides and storms break through. Fortunately, they valued the pier enough to encase its legs in steel. I sometimes wonder if they look to us for hope, the humans. As long as we’re here, wildlife might return. I used to think that too. But I’m not so sure any more.
The iridescence in our feathers has faded. Our eggshells are translucent. Each new generation looks too similar to the next. I have to listen to what the young have to say. I might even be able to do something to help them. They want to try and find our cousins on the continent. They think they’re staying because the arctic’s stopped descending, or that they might be following the insects up north through Scandinavia. They want to know what it feels like to dance with their kin from a thousand other families.
I think I’ll go. There’s a chance I might not make it. But I won’t make it here, especially not without company or anyone to huddle up with at night. It might be worth it. I might get to share my song with a new mate for a last time. I might get to feel the flow of the murmuration again and the shapes of the air when we fly as one.
Part of a written submission for Granta’s Writing Nature workshop, 2025.