Starlings

My "Nature Notes" for January - a second go at writing about one of my favourite birds . . .

I’ve written about starlings before, but the other day a friend was showing me some great pictures of a winter murmuration of starlings around the pier at Aberystwyth, and that has persuaded me to write about them again. Starlings were an everyday part of our lives when I was a child. Our back garden was always full of them, and you heard them singing every day from the housetops. Where we are now, however, we hardly ever see them. For the most part we might just see a little flight pass over, or notice one briefly perch on a neighbouring roof or aerial.

I used to love the sound of our back garden starlings, because they are natural mimics. They will imitate other birds, but often include other noises too. They are quick-witted in other ways too, and able to exploit a wide variety of food sources, though they are basically insect-eaters. In the late summer we do sometimes get a family group of starlings at our garden feeders. They’ve never visited for more than a couple of days, but in that time they do tend to take over; every other bird gets pushed out when a squad of starlings arrives.

Starlings might be the “other garden black bird” - except that their glossy coats are not really black, but have a sheen almost like oil on a puddle, with glints of many colours. In the winter though, their plumage is duller, more matt, and very spotty. Their narrow bills, yellow in summer, are now black. That is a good insect-eating bill, though, designed for probing and stabbing.

Starlings love lawns, and one factor in the decline in the starling population maybe that there aren’t as many garden lawns around; and maybe our homes and gardens are just to tidy for this naturally hole-nesting bird. They are still common, but a lot less common than when I was a child. And declining numbers of common birds should concern us just as much as the disappearance of rare ones. Starlings are also country birds, and impacted by changes in agricultural practice and land use.

At this time of the year, continental starlings join our native birds, so there are many more to be seen, especially in the places (like Aberystwyth) where murmurations are common. Towards the end of the day, starlings gather together in great flocks that behave rather like the flocks of  wading birds like dunlin. I sometimes think that starlings resemble them more than they do the robins and tits and blackbirds with which they share our gardens.

These great flocks of starlings can look almost more like clouds or smoke than a flock of birds. Predators like sparrow hawks may be attracted to these flocks, but in fact the individual bird is much safer within a murmuration than it would be on its own. The hawk finds it hard to focus on any one bird, and will be confused by the constant changes of direction. And eventually the cloud settles down, and the starlings roost safely together. Tykes they may be, but our lives would be much poorer, I think, without starlings.