Hello-help please

we have a starling box & so far this year we had one brood of 5 fledged! Unfortunately the camera in the box got really hazy & it was difficult to see but there is a dead baby in the nest now with maggots! There is a set of starlings-not sure if it’s the original or different trying to reorganise the nest & bringing in new material! Will they just ignore the dead body & build on top or what is likely to happen??

thanks for any answers.

  • Can’t believe no one has replied to this!
  • Hi Ian, Sorry that no one has replied to you. This might be because at this time of year there is so much bird activity that threads quickly disappear from the front page of the Forum and some of the posters here are particularly interested in one or a few species of birds and they may never look at the community's home page which shows threads in the order in which anyone starts a new one or posts on any of them. Sorry, I am not an expert but I imagine that the new pair of Starlings might have gone ahead and covered the corpse with new nesting material. It is possible that by the time any new chicks would hatch that the maggots would have turned into flies and flown away and the nest box might have no more vermin than in a nest which started fairly clean, but this is only pure speculation on my part, of course. What happened to the nest and did you do anything to it or just observe what happened? Best of luck with your bird watching in the future.

  • Sorry to all I’ve written a couple of posts back to you but there seemed to be a glitch & they wouldn’t go on the site! Update is they are back with a vengeance & obviously would like rid of the body! Male is trying to get it out to no avail & the female looks like she’s not having any of it!!
    Damp is not a problem here on the west coast of Scotland Robbo & we have nice sandy soul! There seems to be loads of starlings at the moment all creating a rucchas!
    Ianthe
  • Discussing this at mo! We could do it as box front is halved. They are never there at mo apart from the flurry of activity in the morning! Will let you know what we decide! Not keen on interfering but we actually managed to get up there & clean the camera lens while they were round & about so.....................??
    Ianthe