Hi can anybody help? At the bottom of our road,I saw Starlings and Goldfinchs feeding together,is that unusual behaviour or is it common?
Hi Rock. Welcome to our friendly forum.
If there is some food around they like, you will get a variety of birds appearing. They might squabble a bit but most birds will happily feed together. In my garden I sometimes get Blackbirds, Dunnocks, a few Sparrows and a Robin all feeding together.
I hope the Starlings were not bullying the Goldfinches!
Cheers
Pipit
Hi Pipit thanks for answering my question.
Cheers Birddipper.
Sometimes you get different species feeding together. This is most likely to happen (a) if there's just so much food that the normal competitive aggression isn't necessary or (b) if the species involved are actually feeding in slightly different ways or on different foods in the same spot. Starlings have bills designed to penetrate the top half-inch or so of soil and on short grass will mostly be taking things like cranefly larvae ("leatherjackets") and beetle larvae from within the root mass of the grass. The goldfinches may well have been feeding on smaller insects at the surface or even grass seed. This so-called niche ecology means even very similar species - like the 6 different tit species you get in a good English wood - can feed side by side and not compete.
Of course, anyone with a bird table will have noticed that an abundance of food doesn't always mean there's no aggression between species!
Colin
Hi Colin think you for putting it in easy terms which I found I could understand. CHEERS BIRDDIPPER.