Animal magic

Your weekly fix of all creatures great and small!

- ANAIS SEELY

September sightings

With autumn starting to take hold, not only does the sun start to disappear, but the summer wildlife does, too. Fear not, as September holds some of the  UK’s best wildlife spectacles...

Starling murmuration:

Taking to the skies, a murmuration of starlings is a spectacular sight to see with thousands of birds flocking above.

Moving like fish in a shoal, they dart and dash in all sorts of angles and at first, it’s not clear that the vision is birds! Autumn roosts begin to form in early  September, through to November.

More and more birds will flock together as the weeks go on and the number of starlings in a roost can be around 100,000 in some places.

Deer season:

Autumn only means one thing for a deer – rutting season.

This is the time that a male deer,  stag, or buck, fight over females by challenging one another to a battle.