Otmoor’s massive starling roost is one of the winter highlights on the reserve. Unfortunately last year was a bit of a disappointment, low water levels in the reedbed were probably to blame as predators were able to get out onto the reedbed islands disturbing and discouraging the roost. This year however looks like it could be a good one. Water levels are already almost at our target levels for the winter and the fact that about 5000 birds have been reported coming into roost is a good sign. Numbers will be further swelled by birds coming across from northern Europe as temperatures start to drop and I’m hopefully we’ll end up getting tens of thousands of birds again.
I read recently that since the 1980s 150 starlings have been lost every hour from the European population! That’s 40 million starlings! A staggering number. Changes in land use and farming practices are being blamed for the decline and this loss of suitable habitat has led to the starling being put on the red list of birds of conservation concern.
Interestingly, one of the tasty delicacies enjoyed by starlings are leatherjackets (cranefly larvae). When I was taking soil samples in the Greenaways field recently, I was finding 1 leatherjacket in every 20cm2 sample area. Given that the reserve is 400ha and making (the possibly erroneous) assumption that this whole area has the same density of leatherjackets, there’s the possibility of RSPB Otmoor supporting 100000000 of these wiggly larvae. That’s quite a few and hopefully enough to keep the starlings happy for a while.