WORD reaches us of a mumble of discontent, a grumble of grievances and a groan of grouses and gripes. Villagers in Moorsholm, near Guisborough, are murmuring about a murmuration, complaining to their council about the large numbers of starlings which are infesting their treetops and chimneypots.

Aided and abetted by a large flock of screaming seagulls, the murmuration is splattering windows and washing. It is squashing bushes and killing trees with its acidic guano.

The RSPB is urging villagers to admire the murmuration while it lasts. Starlings are in rapid decline – 66 per cent down since the mid-1970s due to climate change and chemical usage – and many of those murmurating over the edge of the North York Moors are immigrants from eastern Europe. After coming over here and stealing our roosts in early winter, they will go home in the spring.

Murmuration is a marvellous word, derived from French. It means a continuous utterance of low cries and complaints, which is exactly the cumulative effect of starlings’ constant chatter and weird shrieks.

It became the collective noun for a large gathering of starlings in the 15th Century, largely because of the Book of Saint Albans, published in1486 about hunting, hawking and heraldry. The anonymous compilers, who wrote under the penname of Dame Juliana Barnes, liked lists – just as the internet loves listicles today – and worked up a glossary of collective nouns.

They included some real words, like a parliament of owls which goes back to Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th Century and refers to the chattering of birds when they come together. A nye of pheasants and a covey of partridges may also have been genuine, as both are derived from terms which mean “a brood”.

But many others, they made up. Some they made up from folklore roots. For example, a murder of crows, because the large black birds were associated with the devil, or an unkindness of ravens, because ravens were supposed to push their weakest chick out of the nest.

Others they made up because they seemed amusingly appropriate, like a gaggle of geese, an exalting of larks, or a badelynge (“paddling”) of ducks. Or, outside the bird world, a pride of lions, a business of ferrets, a shrewdness of apes, a subtlety of sergeants, a diligence of messengers, a melody of harpers or even a superfluity of nuns.

Some of Dame Juliana’s made-up collective nouns we no longer understand – a fall of woodcocks, a cete of badgers or a dopping of sheldrake – because our language and our sense of humour have changed. Others have stood the test of 500 years because of they were so appropriate, and a murmuration of starlings, however unpleasant it is to have the murmurees showering your house as they murmurate, is one of the best.

IF David Cameron is empty chaired in the TV election debates, there is a danger that, up against Messrs Miliband, Clegg and Farage, the empty chair will look so good – if a little wooden – that it will be elected Prime Minister. The chair would then take its place in the cabinet, which is somehow appropriate.

The compilers of The Book of Saint Albans noted one bird's habit of faking a broken wing to lure a person away from its nest, and so referred to "a deceit of lapwings". That is unfortunate, because it means we cannot employ this collective noun to describe a TV studio full of debating politicians.