This weekend... spot some starlings

It's that baby bird time of year again... You might already have seen young blackbirds, robins, chaffinches and dunnocks taking their first journeys into the wide world outside the nest. Many great tits and blue tits have nested early this year, so their squeaking youngsters might already be out and about, too.

What about starlings? Seen any yet?

Everyone's familiar with adult starlings. They're black with glossy purple and green, sometimes with white spots (sometimes not). They probe their beaks (yellow in spring and summer; black in autumn and winter) into the ground for grubs. (Did you know their eyes are located so that they can see down the hole they make with their beaks?)

We get quite a lot of e-mails each spring which say something along the lines of: 'I've got these funny birds in the garden. They eat all the fat balls I put out for them and they're about the size of a starling. But I can't see them in my bird book. What are they?'

Can a starling change its spots?

Young starlings look quite different and can cause confusion when you see them for the first time... They're mousy-brown all over to start with and don't get their spots until later in the year, when their first set of 'adult' feathers grow through and the brown baby feathers drop out.

That's when you might see birds at an awkward inbetween stage, like this one on the right. 

Love 'em or hate 'em...?

Some people don't like starlings. Too noisy, too greedy, too boisterous, too many of them. Well, starlings make me happy!  

For me, there's nothing like watching a flock scrambling and squabbling for food. Or admiring the beautiful sheen on a starling's throat feathers. Or to see and hear a handsome male starling flapping his wings as he sings from a chimney pot. Or to marvel at the smooth moves of a murmuration as they swoop and sweep across a dusky sky.

Learn to love your starlings... Their numbers have dropped by 66 per cent since the '70s and they need our help.