Sometimes something occurs in one’s every-day life that’s so completely out-of-kilter with what your usual experiences are – that it takes a while for it to sink in. Such an event is the currently popular phenomenon of the “swirling, swarming, starlings.”
I’m sure that you’ve all seen the TV commercial for Carling Lager that shows the dark mass of starlings swooping and swirling in the air and making fantastic swarming shapes in the sky in the process. And I’m also sure that many of you thought it a clever bit of computer-generated-trickery. Well it isn’t – and I’m here, firstly, to give witness to the fact that it really happens and secondly to explain how it impacted on two of the loves of my life – the Northampton based Carling Brewery and Northampton Town Football Club (a.k.a. The Cobblers).
Let me explain. Carling Brewery have a very large production plant in Northampton, where I live and work, and are both a major local employer and a significant advertising supporter of The Cobblers. I should also declare an interest here as a committed consumer of the famous brand of Carling lager. I am also a committed consumer of The Cobblers’ famous brand of ‘just-about-surviving-in-the-lower-divisions’ football that’s played out at Sixfields Stadium – which is one of the modern, post-Taylor Report, all-seater Stadia that’s located just outside of town.
The area known as Sixfields, is a previous land-fill and gravel-pit site that was revitalised and redeveloped some years ago and, apart from hosting The Cobblers football stadium, is now your classic Retail Park that’s home to the usual-suspects of KFC, McDonalds etc. etc. Right next door to Sixfields Stadium is Storton’s Pits, just behind the old Express Lifts tower and that’s where we come to my exposure to the ‘swirling starlings’.
Sixfields can be a gloomy place when The Cobbs are struggling, even after a few Carling warmers, and this season they’ve been struggling for most home games. Some Saturdays at Sixfields would often find us averting our gaze from the tedium being played out on the green-sward and looking skywards for some inspiration. And this season that inspiration suddenly arrived in the guise of the ‘swarming starlings’. Where I sit in the Sixfields West Stand, we have a direct line-of-sight through the open South Stand corner that looks straight across Storton’s Pits and we started to see the arrival of this great flock of birds each week – usually late in the 2nd half and usually when we were struggling (i.e. most weeks).
And this is one of those occasions I mentioned in my introduction, where it only becomes evident later what was really going on, but each week we’d start to look forward to the arrival of the birds – and they’d duly arrive from November onwards, on cue at about 4:30pm, just as dusk was falling. They would then proceed to disport themselves over Storton’s Pits but to us it seemed as if they’d arrived to give us cheer and over the weeks they started to get their own arrival ‘welcome chant’ from the West Stand faithful: something like, “let’s score for the staaaarrrrlllinnngggsss” – and sometimes we did (score, that is). And as the birds swooped and swarmed – the faithful ooohhed and aaahhed and gushed – but I’m sure that I wasn’t alone in wondering why they were swarming, why then and why there?
Well now we know. The reason they always arrived at about 4:30pm is that the starlings are coming into roost in the Winter months, from November to February, just before dusk is falling and they’re looking for somewhere to bed down for the night – and that somewhere was Storton’s Pits. It’s believed that the birds make the amazing patterns as a protection mechanism before they settle down for the night and that they’re surveying the area below for predators, making sure it’s safe for them to go down into the reed beds below. Click here and you can view some footage I found on youtube of the Starlings in action. It’s not at Sixfields but you get the general idea!
But now they’re gone. At last week’s home game on Saturday 24th February 2007, when The Cobbs beat Rotherham 3-0, it was the first week when I’m conscious of looking out for the arrival of the starlings – and they didn’t come. So I can only presume that they’ve gone off to their Spring/Summer residence. Or perhaps it’s just that as we were actually winning a game at home – they’d realised that their job was done?
And what’s to be the legacy of this starling odyssey? Well The Cobblers are still in the dead-zone of possible relegation, but looking a bit more hopeful over recent weeks. We have a new manager, some new players, our results are slightly better and the supporters are no longer looking skywards for inspiration but can actually enjoy the football being served up on the pitch. As for the starlings – we thank them for their swarming-and-a-swirling attendance throughout The Cobbs Winter-of-Discontent, congratulate them on their starring role in the Carling advert and look forward to seeing them again – appearing at a nearby Northampton gravel-pit next November.
