Bird Table News

Should I learn to love starlings?

Starlings seem to have been in decline recently in many gardens - but not in my garden.

I don’t like the gang of starlings that sometimes comes to my garden and eats the food I have put out for other species of bird. Because they sometimes come in large numbers they soon scoop up a lot of the food and seem to ’scare’ other birds away, and yet …..

When I was a young girl I remember a sky full of starlings as they came in to roost. I don’t see that now. Here is a photo of starlings at sunset. They are coming in to roost in Northampton but there are much fewer starlings than I remember.

There were many more starlings when I was young they filled the sky.

One of the reasons for the starlings decline may be that there are not as many nest sites for starlings. Starlings like old sashioned eaves and unsightly holes - modern houses are just too neat for them. They like dead or dying treat and spaces in outbuildings. Our house is not a modern house

I found out a few weeks ago we even have starlings nesting just outside the front door

The chirping of the young in the nest sound lovely though Young-birds-in-a-nest

Starlings seem such aggressive birds I cannot believe they will be in decline for long.

I have seen them take over bird tables and squeeze through meshed bird feeders where blackbirds and thrushes cannot get.

In our garden sometimes there are so many starlings in among the hedges that the leaves are full of their droppings.

Starlings like a pesticide free lawn, which must be why they are a common sight on my lawn. I don’t think the lawn has seen any pesticide in years.

It is easy to confuse starlings with blackbirds. Both the starling and blackbird run about on lawns. But there are differences between two species

THE STARLING

• Has a much shorter tail than the blackbird
• has a sharp, spiky bill
• has plumage that is not coal black and is often adorned with spots
• Wanders about the lawn without stopping whereas blackbirds move about lawns in a stop start way, stopping for a moment, then running on.

I spend time trying to put food out so blackbirds and thrushes can get to it, but starlings can’t. I am not successful.

I don’t have any control over the numbers of starlings that come to my garden. They are wild and free. I may have to learn to love them.

One thing that has always fascinated me is the way starlings seem to have got their name. In summer starlings do not have many spots. In winter starlings have the pale spots all over their dark bodies. The white spots on the black plumage were thought to look like the night sky. So the bird was named the Starling.

Tags: starling