Once, I rescued a fledgling from a starling siege. It was pale and unremarkable. Its freckled front heaved as feathers pecked clean of their rachis caught an updraft and stuck in the hedge. He carried his left foot like unwanted baggage and flinched at my touch. The rabble returned to business: worm-gathering for their clamorous young.

Every March, male starlings descend on our farm with beaks full of straw. They construct sloppy nests in old walls and tin roofs. Once, I watched a bird wrestle a length of yellow yarn from a competitor. It flew behind him like a shock of blonde hair.

After several days of grass garnering and cradle weaving, the love songs begin. The male perches as doorkeeper to the nest, “Tell me I have done well,” he calls. The staccato serenade is guttural yet sweet. He whistles, the timbre light as spring rain. Then he drops a beat. It is rhythmic and persistent; it maps the practicalities of love. A whistle again, this time wild and flirtatious. A female alights. She inspects the nest: will it hold a clutch of eggs? Is it safe? Can she trust this grease-slick, rhapsodising romantic?

There are wooden planks over the windows of the old cattle barn. Young, curious hands prised the edge apart and now it houses a nest. I watch a female add finishing touches. When she disappears, I peek inside. She has lined the roughly woven straw with feathers. I see the yellow yarn braided between beech leaves and grass, a streak of gold, the thread that set her starling lover apart.

The fledgling lodges with us for a morning. My son dangles worm offerings but the youth is close-beaked and untrusting. We fill saucers with water and present every type of insect we can unearth. The tiny bird drops its head and my children accept its resignation.

The starling and I are alone. He is down-feathered and dull-eyed. I carry him to the shadow of a cypress gold and issue an appeal to his mother. From the window, I watch the youth stumble. He throws his head back and opens his beak. From nowhere, a worm-carrying mother descends. If I ended the story here, I would do nature a disservice.

The mob gathers like a dark cloud. Mother starling retreats. At first, they are strung out on the power line, strepitoso semi-quavers marking the perfect cadence. One by one they land and spill like an oil slick on the grass. I lose sight of our visitor.

There is a small lake near our farm; it is fed by several tributaries and flanked by reed beds. A storm-beaten jetty is tethered to a tree and rises and falls with the water level. From here I watch starling murmurations before the flock relocate to the city. Once, the flat water mirrored their movement and my joy was doubled. The shapeshifting fog buckled and bent, rose and fell, flicked its tail like a whip then made as if to dive into itself. As swift as their arrival, they move on, farmyard nests abandoned, pale blue eggshells sprinkled like glitter on the tarmac.

Beneath the three low arches of the Albert Bridge in Belfast, hundreds of local and immigrant starlings roost. If the Lagan could reflect the underbelly of the bridge at night, it would show the cast iron supports threaded with birds like tightly-packed kebabs. It would depict squabbles and scuffles as starlings vie for position. Female birds fare worst, then juveniles, with adult males securing the best sites. As sunrise approaches, their clarion call echoes in the parabolic arch, sending ripples into Belfast’s financial district and downriver to the shipyards. Their exodus is staged as starlings take to the wing in search of slim Winter pickings.

Once, I stood on the bridge at sunset. I imagined I could pick out the city-slicked starlings with humble farmyard roots. The murmuration weaved its way through city smog. The wing beats sounded like the magnified crack of a fly line gaining momentum above a river. When the birds dipped, I felt the draught on my skin. This mass of flock and feather is a mystery half guessed at: they transpose to trick predators; their dance is an invitation to spend the night together; their extrovert tendencies favour a crowd. The birds reached dizzying heights on the Belfast skyline. Onlookers craned their necks as the cloud unfurled at the edges against the dying light of the sky. All of a sudden, it funnelled, and an undulation of starling wave lapped beneath the bridge and disappeared.