Bottoms up!

Last year, my new Starling nestbox was christened by Great Tits, who successfully raised a brood in what must have seemed to them a palatial mansion.

This year, it was taken over by those-for-which-it-was-intended, and for the past three weeks I have been entertained by the increasingly frequent feeding visits of the parent Starlings .

Here is the view I have usually been getting. In comes the parent, to an already feverishly excited chorus from the chicks inside - there must be some approach call from the adults to alert the youngsters to the next snack.

The adults usually cling momentarily, bottoms up, on the outside, before squeezing inside the nest, but are out again within maybe 3 or 4 seconds. (Starling nests are notorious for being rather smelly places, so perhaps that explains the parents' urge to evacuate quickly!).

Here's the other half of one of my Starlings...

One of the many fascinating things about Starlings is that although pairs don't often live side-by-side (they have to take holes wherever they can find them), all the pairs in an area will commence breeding within a few days of each other. This ensure that the chicks, when they fledge, can band together into 'teenage' groups that go off to feed together.

I love this thing too that Starlings skulls are specially adapted so that they have extra strong muscles to open their bill (in most birds the strength is in closing the bill). This means that they can skewer into the turf with their bill, and then open up a hole to look for worms.  And this is made even easier by being able to rotate both eyes forward to look right down the hole they have just probed. Isn't evolution amazing?

I had a few days away last week - when I left, the youngsters were beginning to poke their heads out of the nest, so it was no surprise that I came back to an empty box, and young Starlings, hopefully mine, were in the trees and at my feeders.

Now I wait to see whether they will try for a second brood. Starlings don't always have one, but one would expect them to start one to two weeks after the first fledged. I hope so - I'm very happy to have a repeat performance.