Continuing with my bird-by-bird look at the avian life of East Finchley (and yes, we will get to the finches at some point!), I’m looking at Starlings this time. Glossy black and speckled (more so in the autumn), and rather gregarious, the Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris, also known as the European Starling in North America) always strikes me as being a winter bird even though it is in fact a resident here in Britain.
It’s also on the RSPB’s red list according to my bird book (the RSPB Handbook of British Birds, 2021 edition) as the British Starling population has experienced a strong decline, although from what I can see (ie. Starlings most days when I go for a walk or look at the feeder in my front garden) they’re a regular sight. Unlike the smaller birds that visit, they’re not afraid of the parakeets!
Numbers have actually declined in much of Western Europe over the past few decades, due largely to changes in farming meaning that there are fewer invertebrates for them to feed on. Worldwide, though, they have been deemed to be of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (this being what you see when you look up a bird species on Wikipedia). They were introduced into North America in the nineteenth century, notably in 1890 when a chap called Eugene Schliffen released sixty of them in New York’s Central Park, although the notion that he had a plan (sorry, couldn’t resist!) to introduce every bird species mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare into the US appears to be an urban myth.
Back here in Britain, the Starling is a resident bird s as though numbers do indeed swell in the winter as we get an influx of visitors from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.
Starlings are the great mimics of the bird world. Their song (and it’s mostly the males who do the singing) can be melodical and it can be mechanical, and they can imitate other birds as well as man-made sounds like car alarms. A general rule of thumb that I have with birdsong is that if I can’t figure out what it is, it’s safe to assume that it may be a Starling.
Perhaps that’s why I hear a lot of Starlings!
I cannot mention Starlings without mentioning murmurations — those close-formation swarms of large numbers of flying Starlings, synchronised yet random in terms of direction. It’s a sight to behold but I have only ever seen it once, at dusk on the seafront at Aberystwyth (where, incidentally, there’s a pub called the Starling Cloud, although that’s quite a way inland; best pub in Aber is the Glengower which is right on the esplanade). It was quite the sight! How, I wonder, are they able to do that?
