THE Belfast starlings are coming home to roost.
Recent efforts to coax them back to Albert Bridge beside the old Central Station are clearly working.
This picture, taken by a reader who lives alongside the bridge, is proof of the ever-growing flock that returns there every dusk.
“There are many hundreds of birds now – it’s easily quadrupled in recent weeks,” he said. “It used to be a fantastic sight around here until bright lights were installed under the bridge and the starlings vanished overnight. Now that red filters have been put on those lights, it's clear the starlings feel at home once more.”
It’s no surprise the birds disappeared overnight – would you get any kip if someone shone a floodlight through your bedroom window all night? The dusk gathering of starlings – druid in Irish – is a city centre wonder that even attracts tourists and stops pedestrians in their tracks as they cross the bridge. These murmurations – where flocking starlings somehow manage to make spectacular patterns in the sky like those you’d see in a kaleidoscope – happen anywhere starlings roost, but it’s rarely seen at an inner city location like downtown Belfast.
Birds from the suburbs – including the pair which spend the day chattering on Dúlra’s chimney – gather under the bridge, chatting loudly and happily to each other before they sleep.
They go to the water because it’s warmer there at night, as water cools at a slower rate than concrete, cement and tarmac. In many other places, they gather in marshes, in Denmark for instance, where a million birds meet during migration, their murmuration so enormous that they obliterate the light from the setting sun in a phenomenon which locals call the “black sun”.
Albert Bridge is going in the right direction and the decision to filter those floodlights is paying off. It’s a rare success in a city where nature rarely seems to be a priority. But there are hopeful signs that is changing – and this week it emerged that the Council could soon be planting mini-urban forests in patches of land throughout the city, taking inspiration from the noted Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who died in 2021 aged 93.
A champion of native forests, Akira discovered that just 0.6 per cent of Japanese forests were indigenous. Native Japanese trees were best suited to address climate change, having developed over millennia to suit the Japanese climate. So he got to work – and restored native forests on 1,300 sites in Japan and in countries around the world, including Italy and Paris, where an old parking lot was transformed into the city’s first mini-forest in 2021.
A traditional Irish rainforest would take 200 years to mature through natural succession – increase that to 500 in the tropics. But Miyawaki could do it in just 20 years.
His method is like baking a cake – first you need many native seeds, gathered as close to the new mini-forest as possible. They should be germinated in a nursery to ensure they are protected, and the ground where they are to be planted needs to be rejuvenated with organic matter.
Then – and here’s the key – the seedlings should be planted densely and not in uniform rows to encourage competition between them. They only receive sunlight from above so they experience a growth spurt upwards. The trees grow 10 times faster and become 30 times denser than a normal forest. And the good news is that you don’t need vast spaces like the Belfast Hills to build your forest – an old car park or the waste ground where a building used to be would do nicely.
A motion proposed by Green Councillor Brian Smyth says the plan could transform Belfast. He points out that the city’s middle-class areas like Stranmillis and Stormont have the most tree cover, while many working-class districts remain concrete jungles.
Imagine – a forest literally on your doorstep. Even the starlings would love that.
• If you’ve seen or photographed anything interesting, or have any nature questions, you can text Dúlra on 07801 414804.
