A highlight for this month, most nights, is the starlings’ gathering at dusk. The starlings from all over Middlesbrough group together at Saltholme in the reed beds in safety from predators such as the Sparrowhawk, this doesn’t stop the predators from trying, but it reduces the chances of the starlings being predated.
Saltholme offers a chance to see starling roosts with thousands of birds creating amazing shapes, the flight paths of the starlings look graceful and if you listen carefully you can hear their wings fluttering. Once they disappear out of sight into the reed beds it is a quick dash into the densely packed reed beds (they have two main reasons for this that we know of - they want to be close for safety from predators and warmth for in the night.)
My video below shows you a little about the starlings from the RSPB event at Saltholme ‘soup and starlings’. If you would like to come on one of the evenings then you can find the contact details here for Saltholme.
On Tuesday the estate team were digging reeds from an established area and moving them to another area because we are working on improving reed beds elsewhere around the site, you can find out what happened by looking at the previous blog or just click here to read Peter’s blog.
On the same day you can see here from further into the reed beds, that we found a disused harvest mouse nest which is a lovely woven ball. The other picture below shows tiny evidence of food remains from a water vole; we can tell this because of the sharp angle that the vegetation is cut from the rushes, grasses and sedges that have been left in a neat pile.
- Josh McGowan