#starlings in show

[cappy]

###just recently we have had the starling sky show ...thousands flying at dusk over the village ....it is incredible how they do not colide as they all turn at once as if they were one......the sight is a great thing to watch ......a local farmer has used his incregibly loud bird scarer to try and scare them off .......the downside is the bird crap coming down in bucketfulls .....and pebble dashing the village with what one old guy calls bird lime .....dont know about that.....it sure looks like bird shite to me .....it appears now that when the bird scarer goes off anyone out and about runs for cover .....but still gets a splatter or to from thousands doing there aerial display .....watch it every night ...but from indoors cappy

[Keith Tindell]

Known as a murmuration, don't know if that is spelt correctly, but as you say Cappy some sight to see. One of the other source of problems is in marinas, they come in and use the rigging , and crap all over the yachts, and i mean crap, there is no way you can take the boat out until its been washed down, and if left, its like bloody concrete. On cars is a menace to the paintwork. As an aside, i have not seen aa starling here in my garden for years, kt

[Harry Nicholson]

###just recently we have had the starling sky show ..watch it every night ...but from indoors cappy

They seem to avoid each other, but how do they avoid the rain of defacation that descends? Most of the Winter starlings are Scandinavian migrants. In summer we have only a few pairs in this village, they've been nesting in a nearby roof for some years. I enjoy their chortling in the morning:

On a chimney pot
Carved into the morning
A starling chortles

[John Arton]

I was watching David Attenborough program on life in the air and he was saying that the reason the starlings all bunch together and keep changing direction is a form of defence against airborne attacks by hawks and other predators.
Rgds
J.A.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

HI Cappy.
Down here it's not starlings it's Major Mitchell's hundreds of them flock in from the plains, but fair dos they don't drop any bombs on us.
Cheers Des

[Keith at Tregenna]

They were a delicacy years ago, will look up a starling recipe.

I know it was not star gazy pie as that was a fish dish.

K.

[happy daze john in oz]

Now had they been Correlas you would be singing a different story.
members of the Parrot family they flock in their hundreds and thousands.
Do not crap that much but will eat just about anything.
Plagues of them will descend on a town and even eat the plastic covering on wires.
Just think your selves very lucky, Mary's wooden leg would not stand a chance

[Doc Vernon]

And give a thought for those People in Madagascar who in certain Seasons are plauged with Bats! (Flying Foxes) there are times when the Skies there are actually covered in such masses that it blocks out the light!
Mind you it is good for them at times as they eat the Bats there,it is a delecacy in some parts!
How aweful! Yuk!

[robpage]

The murmurings are quite a beautiful site but we don't see very many starlings now on the south coast I think they've obviously moved North for the winter

When working for the dairy they were a massive problem as the stacks of crates came out into the loading yard the starlings would swooped down and Peck through the foil lids of the glass bottles they seem to like milk the problem was their beaks carried a whole raft of deadly poisonous bacteria and you would find all kinds of nasty things in the milk their pet through the sort of thing that would kill a little old lady , shall we had to discourage them from doing it a quality control manager a bit of an animal lover put up cardboard silhouettes of sparrowhawks the starlings used to perch on top of them she tried flashing lights things that went bang and eventually gave up and decided it was not a quality control issue but it belong to Engineering . I contacted the Hawk Conservancy from Andover who brought in a couple of beautiful although surprisingly small sparrowhawks The Sparrowhawk didn't look much bigger than a starling and the yard was full of them the sparrowhawks came out of the back of the van the two handlers had one each on their arm remove the hood from The Sparrowhawk and launch them they both came back with a fresh lunch lay the starlings on their back plucked them and had starling breast sushi having enjoyed that and being fed the next job was to go back up and scare the starlings again last seen the starlings were on Mass heading over the Isle of Wight . They used to come back about every 3 months and the Hawk Conservancy you to come about every three months and the starlings soon learnt that hang around the dairy yard and you would become sparrowhawk lunch

It probably sounds quite cruel but I think it was far more effective then trapping and poisoning and a lot more discriminatory

[Keith at Tregenna]

The stunning display of starlings in flight over Barry that has been happening every night

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...JOKFlOoQJ9ykVY