Crowds of Starnels…
Just outside the window a starling has landed on one of the bird feeders. It flew in with all the bravado that comes with that species, and clamping its claws to the stand pushed its head into the opening and stabbed at a fat ball. The bird is a particularly splendid example of its type, the colours of the feathers seamlessly changing between browns, dark reds and that wonderful iridescent blue. If you look at it from one angle and then turn your head slightly the whole colour effect changes.
Starlings have become regular visitors to our feeders over the past couple of years. Not so long ago they were very rare in these parts but slowly their local population seems to be building, though I think it will be some time before we can boast one of those startling aerial displays. Our local murmuration gathers for much of the time in the trees in the churchyard, a place occupied until recently by the jackdaws. This year, though, it seems that the jackdaws have been usurped and the starlings gather there, chattering (another collective noun) to such an extent that passers-by cannot but stop and look up to see what they are all talking about.
Back on the feeders another couple of starlings jet in and the first one gets very cross about this. How dare they come and invade his dinner? A scuffle ensues, birds leaping off branches and arms of feeders, flapping at each other and swearing like the proverbial troopers. They reach a crescendo and then are gone. That game is over and off they fly to find another.
A moment of silence and then out of the tree pops the tenacious blue tit. It sits on the end of a branch, cocks its head and looks this way and that before flying onto one of the seed-feeders. It grabs a few seeds, drops them - all the birds seem to be quite fussy - and then flits back into the tree to tap the selected seed open on a branch. Seeing that the coast is clear, a second and then a third blue tit appears and they jump around from seeds to fat balls to tree and back to seeds. For such small birds they don’t seem to be too bothered by other visitors; even one incoming starling can be coped with though a small gang is just too much hassle and they will disappear until things settle down. But at the moment, no mobs and so they continue to feed.
Other tits appear. A coal tit flies in, grabs a seed, flies out; its mate flies in then out, then the first comes back. They rarely stay more than a couple of seconds and I wonder if they burn up all the energy from the one seed by all that flying back and forth. A larger tit bounces on the end of a thin branch. The great tit is magisterial, its dark head and clear black streak down its chest giving it an air of superiority.
This selection of cousins is eventually infiltrated by chaffinches. A female goes straight for a seed-feeder. The male, imposing with his pink-red breast and steel grey helmet on his head, stands guard on the top of the small tree by the feeders. He keeps an eye on all that goes on around - and an eye on the female. Only when she appears to have had her fill will he come down and eat. He generally only eats from the feeders here but the female will wander around on the floor picking up titbits and rejected seeds.
She is not alone on the ground. The great waddling wobbling wood pigeons flatten a path through the burgeoning undergrowth. This year there seem to be two pairs in the garden, billing and cooing on the fence or the rose arch, landing with a resounding thud on the shed or perching incongruously on flimsy branches that bend to the near vertical. This is just practice for their nests. Not overly creative and either very lazy or stupid, a pigeon nest is a few sticks laid somewhere on which a few eggs are laid. We had one in the garden that was at such an angle that the eggs just rolled off at the merest hint of a wind. They have yet to nest this year so we shall see what predicament awaits their potential offspring.
At the other end of the scale, dashing around on the ground virtually unnoticed, are the dunnock. We have had a pair in the garden since we moved in and I suppose this continuity can be partly put down to the fact that they are the archetypal SBJ, a small brown job that scurries about in the undergrowth and only seems to fly to get to another part of the garden to disappear again under a bush. They dash under the feeders, pick up dropped seeds, dash under a few nearby plants, grab something else to eat and then work their way along one of the yet-to-be-alive flower borders using the tunnels formed by arched stems and brown leaves.
If the dunnock are dull (but only in markings) then the most splendid of the regular feeders have to be the goldfinches. Over the past year they have gradually moved from feeding solely on the tree feeders across the garden to also using the ones nearest the house and it is a great joy to see two or three or even four at once working their way through the seeds. Their bright yellow markings together with their black and white wing feathers and the red stripes on the head make them one of the most colourful and easily recognised visitors.
This time of year though, all of the birds start putting on their best coats. The male chaffinch’s chest gets a deeper pink, his helmet a steelier grey; the blackbird’s beak looks a brighter yellow against his glossy black feathers; and the robin’s breast gets redder. Well, except for one of our robins whose patch of red last year was quite small and the amount of white surrounding it made you look twice to check that it was Britain’s favourite bird.
Another regular whose coat is buffed up in the spring is the greenfinch. The males seem to get greener and the yellow strip along their wing brighter. Like all finches, once on the feeder they are there for some time. They dig into the seed, get a mouthful, eat it then look round to see what is happening. They don’t appear to be keeping an eye out for trouble, more looking defiant in case someone else was coming along to use their feeder. Greenfinches have been particularly susceptible to trichomonosis, a disease that affects the throat and gullet and was thought to be the root of the major decline in numbers earlier this century. Thankfully they appear to be recovering and have been regulars here for the past couple of years.
All in all we are seeing 15 or so different species on a regular basis and it is interesting to see the numbers come and go as the year turns round. Last spring the local starlings brought their newly-fledged youngsters to feed off our fat balls and at peak times we had about 20 collecting there. Mainly insect eaters, starlings will eat, or this time of year devour, fruit, seeds and fat products. After fledging last year our feeders were being emptied of 15 or more fat balls a day. Initially the fluffy fledglings would sit on a nearby branch and just make a continual shriek until one of the parents dropped some food in its mouth. Unfortunately as soon as the parent left, the food was gone and the racket started again. Even those chicks that had both parents working a production line were not sated. Eventually they learned to feed for themselves, after several attempts at clinging on at difficult angles and stabbing the ball with their sabre-like beaks.
Then it is off to pastures new, feeding on the larvae that are beginning to show themselves. We still know the starlings are around us as they collect on the roof tops, practising their calls, their whistles and, still, their trim-phone impersonations. I suppose mobile ringtones are so diverse they don’t get enough opportunity to mimic them. They will gather together again in the autumn and bring the trees in the churchyard alive with their clattering, and who knows we may yet have our display as ‘The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by’.
