World News for Students of English

22-03-2022 15:00

People released incredible footage showing thousands of starlings flying together in a murmuration in southern Israel. The huge flock of starlings formed beautiful, dark clouds moving in the sky.

A murmuration occurs when starlings fly in synchronicity, creating what seems to the eye to be a black cloud which randomly changes direction and form. Experts say that the synchronised movement is aimed at helping the birds find food and to create a defence mechanism against birds of prey, which usually try to hunt the individual birds and rarely attack large flocks.

Huge flocks of synchronised starlings like this are beginning to return to Israel for the first time after 20 years. Today, hundreds of thousands of the birds inhabit Israel, compared to millions in the past.

Difficult words: starling (a small bird from Europe), murmuration (a flock of starlings), synchronicity (when things happen at the same time), random (when things happen without a plan), synchronised (when things happen at the same time and with the same movements), defence mechanism (a way to defend yourself), flock (a large group of animals), inhabit (live somewhere).

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