A Murmuration of Britishness

Two hundred dead starlings were discovered littering a road in Anglesey last month, doubtless prompting many helpful theories as to the cause. Mere experts have now thrust their hard, unpleasant beaks into the matter and announced that the birds most likely did not die from anything so plausible as Russian novichok poisoning, EU red tape, Labour antisemitism or the endlessly brewing racial malice of the Duchess of Sussex. Instead, it seems they died from impact trauma, suggesting that the flock encountered a predator which might have killed one or two of them, and took evasive action which involved a couple of hundred at the rear making a kamikaze raid on the tarmac. In this context it would certainly be churlish in the extreme to point out that Anglesey voted for independence from the Brusso-Strasbourgian yoke; while any attempt to traduce the infallible patriotic instinct for averting an inconvenience by inducing a catastrophe would no doubt be positively treasonous.