Ron, until there was hardly anything of it left at all and they could no longer nest there, starlings used to put on a show like that around the dilapidated West Pier in Brighton. A student of mine wrote an orchestral piece that attempted to portray that movement and shape-morphing - and did it rather well. She didn't use the kinds of mathematical modelling that Xenakis would have, no doubt, but found her own way of realising it quite successfully!

Did anybody else catch the rather sad little programme on BBC2 last night about The Great Omanii - the self-styled 'oldest stuntman in the world'? He lived in Brighton, and there was a shot of all that remains of the West Pier, rather like the silhouette of a stunted pagoda made from scaffolding (quite a shock to me because it must be over thirty years since I was last in Brighton, and my memories of it are somewhat different). I mention this only because the shot was taken in the early evening, and there around the remains, unmistakably, was a dark elastic cloud of starlings. They were still there very recently, martle!