WILDLIFE
Though some bird experts do not rate the
starling’s song, others have thought differently throughout history. Mozart was so impressed by the bird’s orchestral prowess that he kept a starling as a pet, and he is said to have incorporated its songs into some of his piano concertos. Samuel Pepys also kept a starling for its vocal skills. This sound – a frenetic medley of spontaneous clicks, whirrs, chirrups and gurgles – pours forth like a babbling burn in full spate. While the starling is clearly creative, it is a mistake to compare its operatic mastery with the more refined songs of birds such as the nightingale. Beauty, after all, is in the ear of the listener. Starlings are also the finest mimics of all In fact, so good are they
our bird species.
at imitating other birds that they’ve fooled many a skilled twitcher and sent the unwary on a wild goose chase. They can imitate bells, alarms and dog whistles, and are known to cause mayhem luring working dogs trained to the whistle in totally the wrong direction. I have heard them perfectly mimic curlews, buzzards, owls, thrushes, yapping terriers and car alarms. My grandmother had a starling in her garden that learnt several tunes whistled by the milkman, the initial strains of Colonel Bogey being its favourite. It also imitated her telephone regularly, fooling her into a mad dash inside to answer it (the modern-day starling has graduated to perfecting a few of the varied ringtones of the mobile phone). Building sites provide city starlings with great opportunities, copying the infamous wolf whistles as any non- feathered and vaguely attractive bird passes by. Bird-brains starlings are not, for there are many stories of them being so clever that they can even time these whistles to perfection. The starling, once our most common British
bird, is currently going through a very bad patch – so much so that it has been added to the RSPB’s Red List for birds of conservation concern. Records show it has suffered a massive 79% population drop in the past 30 years.
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‘Mozart was so impressed by the bird’s orchestral prowess that he kept one as a pet’
There appears to be no definitive answer to why this has happened, but commentators point to recent changes in land use as large swathes of the countryside is turned into a forced food factory with massive sterile fields sprayed and artificially fertilised, few hedgerows and lots of soulless forestry blocks, to say nothing of our encroachment on natural habitat and the draining of wetland. Like the plight of bees and many other insects vital to our survival, what’s happening to the starling should be a warning that all is far from well in our environment. One place that does remain a stronghold
for the starling is the Hebrides. There, old- fashioned pastureland, livestock farming and huge banks of rotting seaweed provide enor- mous numbers of flies and invertebrates for the birds to feed on. Starlings thrive where there are out-wintered cattle and feed off the inver- tebrates and insects in dung, as well as the gleanings from troughs. During the winter months, starling numbers
across Britain are swelled as birds arrive from Europe and Russia. This creates one of the finest spectacles of the natural world as vast flocks, or murmurations, often numbering many thousands, dive and swoop in the air at
BOTTOM LEFT - DIGOARPI/SHUTTERSTOCK, ALL OTHERS POLLY PULLAR
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