Where are the starlings?

[Rockin Robin]

I live in northern cumbria and i have only ever seen one starling here and occasionally a small flock going overhead, but they never come into my garden.

[Maisie]

They're at our house. Sorry. ;)

[Gandalf]

Can confirm. They are definitely in Cheshire. As I write this there are 12-15 on my feeders.

[shirehorse]

Theres a lot of them in Hampshire as well

[dougied]

Ditto, plenty here in Wiltshire too :)

[PiratesAhoy!]

As Maisie said, they're all in Cheshire I'm afraid! If you look at my YouTube videos (link from my profile) you'll see we get up to 200 a day!

[Margaret]

Got a lot in my little garden here in Somerset too.

When I was little we used to get huge flocks particularly in the evenings, there were so many it could get quite dark and eerie, the flocks that I see now aren't so big but still a spectacular sight.

I can't remember quite whereabouts, but somewhere down on the levels they do a Starling Watch and you can still see gi-normous flocks wheeling around as they come in to roost for the night.

Margaret

[shirehorse]

I've got a lot of Starlings today, I've just been sitting here watching a whole flock (to many to count!) in my very tiny garden, they were trying to all get on the 'fat balls' at the same time and the noise was terrible!! Awe bless!

[Jabber]

I put a bag of sultanas out today and it only took the starlings minutes to finish the lot.

[Mealworm]

Rockin Robin - they are all in my garden in the Black Country (West Midlands). To those of you who responded to my posting about the little blighters knicking all the food I've found the answer. A CJ mealworm feeder with a guard. They HATE it. The only worry now is that they are colluding with the squirrels so I expect an SAS type ambush soon.

[Jabber]

If you want to know where the Starlings are then look no further...

The owner of this car wash in the USA was accused of having a spare key and stealing the profits so he installed CCTV to catch the thief...




http://www.lynn-whitehead.demon.co.uk/image5.jpg


http://www.lynn-whitehead.demon.co.uk/image6.jpg

http://www.lynn-whitehead.demon.co.uk/image7.jpg

http://www.lynn-whitehead.demon.co.uk/image8.jpg

Once they identified the thieves they found $4000 in the gutters and under a tree

[NotQuiteBlackCoot]

There's a lot of starlings in Shropshire too. 12+ invade our garden several times a day, but the blackbirds and house sparrows, and even the shyer dunnocks have learnt to just get on with it now, or they'll get nothing to eat. The starlings are so funny, I can watch them for ages. They seem to come out with new noises almost every day. They should be on the stage!
Talking of numbers, we have had as many as 20 house sparrows swarming over the feeders, as well as I can count them anyway. Usually about 12 at the moment. Might have lost some to a sparrow hawk, not a daily visitor, and not always successful as there's a lot of thick & thorny cover in our small garden. A sparrow hawk did get a starling one day, and the others just sat and watched instead of flying to safety or diving down into the rose thicket.Der!

[PiratesAhoy!]

They'll adapt to the sparrowhawk attacks. Ours did. At first they didn't know what to do and just stood around looking vacant. Now they scurry for cover, and are very good at seeing the signs of an impending attack.

Of course, that's not so much a problem now that two very large crows have moved into the willow tree, and have been mobbing the hawk!

Our birds have now learned to time their feeds carefully, so they can get in there before the starlings. To the extent now that our blackbirds follow me around on my morning feeding trips, and will happily jump in front of my path if I've got raisins/sultanas!

[Jenny]

Jabber - what wonderful photos and a great laugh!

I'm now even more convinced the birds go into hiding for Birdwatch weekend - I've been invaded by starlings since Tuesday! :rolleyes:

[Jabber]

Jabber - what wonderful photos and a great laugh!

:rolleyes:

Fantastic aren't they, I coudn't believe it at first :D

[PiratesAhoy!]

I reckon if our lot got hold of currency like that, they'd be really dangerous! All they'd need to do then would be to pop down to the local McDonalds, land on the drive-through order kiosk, and say "cheese!".

Ours are addicted to cheese, and they're more than capable of speech ;)

[Ken]

We have dozens in garden - I think it maybe the tube like fat ball full of seeds and peanuts. The thing is they have almost eaten the thing in 4 days!!

[Loopy]

We get anything from 5 to 20 starlings a day. They dominate the big seed feeder as well as the bird table and the ground so I put up a caged seed feeder so the tits and finches could get their share. The others tend to turn up as soon as I have put the food out to beat the starlings as well. I even saw a young starling last year trying out the nyjer seed feeder...

[Ken]

Well the starlings have had their fill of the peanut and seed and have now concentrated more on what they can find on the ground and the bluetits and blackbirds are getting stuck into the seeds and the fat balls (which are now in proper holder!) We have also been visited by a pair of Jays.

[Jules]

There are plenty of starlings here too. They are very organised in their pursuit of food. I have watched a large flock flying overhead which then split right down the middle. Half the flock then came down to feed in my garden while the other half went on to feed elsewhere. How does the flock manage to divide itself so cleanly; all the birds knew exactly which half of the flock they were flying with and there were no stray starlings left in the middle?

[Jenny]

Notice that up here we don't get (except extremely rarely) the huge dark clouds of starlings that I experienced in England. I am making the rough assumption that we don't have the arable fields and food supplies of those areas I used to live in.

[Loopy]

Maybe they have discovered blue tooth and there's a starling radio frequency we haven't discovered yet? :D

[Jules]

Hmmm.......so if we were to tune into starling bluetooth then all our questions would be answered. We would know exactly what they're up to all of the time. And presumably that would lead the way to sparrow frequencies, goldfinch frequencies, song thrush frequencies etc etc. Just think how interesting that would be.