View From The Shed by Shaun Finnie - LITTLE STARS

LITTLE STARS

My sister and I have had quite a few full and frank discussions over the years, as brothers and sisters have been in the habit of doing since time began. One of our most memorable contretemps was when she asked me if I liked her new dress. Who knew that she didn’t want an honest answer? Certainly not a twelve year-old me.

Whilst by no means as obsessed with birdlife as myself, she does appreciate a good bit of nature when she sees it. Jays, Pheasants, Blue Tits, all lovely. However, there is one particular bird in which I can see the beauty but she cannot. In fact she even goes as far as to call them “ugly, greasy and dirty”. That’s her prerogative of course but every right-thinking person knows that she’s just plain wrong. The truth is that the birds in question - Starlings - are simply stunning. 

Iridescence is seen as beautiful on a Kingfisher, so why not on a Starling? At first glance they might appear to be nondescript dark but then you notice how they change in the light to be green… or maybe purple…  with white spotting that might be silver or beige. The official RSPB plumage guide lists ten different colours among their feathers, but Starlings are  still pretty easy to identify, especially with their almost-comedic fast walk.

Shape-wise they’re best described as triangular and pointy. Stumpy tail, short and angular wings and that pointiest of all pointy beaks that seems to split the bird’s head in half when it opens. This fearsome dagger is just as adept at probing the ground for worms, invertebrates and other delectables as it is stabbing at other birds.

My sister and I agreed to differ on this occasion, leaving our sibling rivalries for any larger disagreements that may come our way. Not that they ever do. We’re not the kind of family that has regular squabbles. The Starlings that she (so wrongly) dislikes are a completely different story though. Squabbling is in their DNA. They appear to be constantly pecking and jibing at each other, both physically and verbally. Much as I think the Starling is a gorgeous bird, I wouldn’t want to be stuck on a long road trip with one. You can imagine the kind of thing; “What are you going this way for? I told you to turn left back there. No, the OTHER left!”. It’s all friendly banter though. They’ll bicker all day with their friends, cousins and the old bird from three trees down, then roost beside the same frenemies for warmth later. 

Given that they’re part of every citiscape in our country, you might be surprised to learn that the Starling is on the RSPB’s red list as a bird of the highest conservation concern. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve become rare, far from it, but that their numbers are dropping at a staggering rate. There has been an 80% decline in their population since 1966. Let that shocking fact sink in; we’ve lost four out of every five Starlings in just under sixty years. This is largely due to changing land use. Like Old Moor’s star species, the Bittern, Starlings would ideally roost in reedbeds. We humans have no use for these habitats nowadays; when was the last time you thatched your roof or stuffed fresh rushes into your mattress? Exactly. Starlings also prefer to feed in pastures and meadowlands, two more farming practices that have fallen out of favour. So fewer places to live plus fewer places to eat equals fewer surviving Starling chicks year on year. Their decline brings us a long way from 1949, when there were so many of them in London that the combined weight of a flock landing on the hands of Big Ben actually managed to turn back time. 

There are 128 recognised Starling species around the world. The one we see here in Britain is the Common Starling, also known as the European Starling. 32 of the other species are known as the Glossy Starlings - so called because they’ve taken that previously-mentioned iridescence to another level. Some of the more gaudier examples are absolutely splendid and superb, so much so that there are actually birds called Splendid Starling and Superb Starling. You’ve got to be pretty special to live up to that billing. These Glossy Starling species are ridiculously brightly coloured and can even appear to shimmer in the right light, but sadly for us here in England, that particular light is usually far away in Africa. However, if you ever find yourself in Spain or Portugal you might spot a Spotless Starling, a bird much like our own Common representative of the genus but with much less obvious markings - so apparently unspotty, in fact, as to appear (as its name suggests) spot-less.

Wherever they live, all Starlings have a widely ranging vocabulary. It can be anything from an exuberant trill as pretty as many songbirds’ through to a series of almost mechanical clicks and whirrs. They can even make a decent stab at imitating the odd human word. The Starling’s song is incredibly varied and intricate, and they are very fond of showing it off, particularly when trying to attract a mate. 

As the suffix ‘-ling’ usually means ‘small’, then the title of this piece is very apt. Starlings are indeed ‘little stars’. And their star turn, as far as we humans can appreciate it, is their spectacular group gathering known as murmuration. Once upon a time they would number in their millions. Even now there can be tens of thousands of birds flocking together in these stunningly impressive events, more than the human eye can register, let alone count. How can we possibly even begin to estimate how many birds are in such a huge throng?

Well…  Come back in a week’s time, fact fans, for the next enthralling episode of View From the Shed, tentatively entitled “How Does the Count Count?”