Starling mimicry

[Parsons Jack]

Anybody else noticed how starlings mimic other birds? I have just been watching about 20 of them pretending they are house martins
There must be loads of airborne insects about today in the sun, and the starlings are stocking up on an unusual food supply for them.
Their flight pattern looks just like the martins, and it's not until you look a bit closer that you realise that it is actually starlings

[Nature's Babe]

Wow, very observant of you Parsonsjack. Well they are such social and chatty birds. A flock of starlings were first to spot the remaining grapes hanging on my grapevine after the leaves dropped, and very noisy and exuberant in their enjoyment of them.

[glallotments]

I know that there song mimics all sorts of things natural or not. We have heard them mimic a mobile phone and a car alarm. Didn't know they mimicked actions as well

[Monika]

Yes, we had one starling around here for several years which mimicked our fixed telephone (in fact, we called him/her "Telephone") and he/she would get us rushing into the house from the garden to "answer the phone"!

If you see flocks of "starlings" at the moment, do have a proper look at them: they may turn out to be waxwings which look deceptively like starlings when in flight!

[Parsons Jack]

Hi Monika,

I have never been lucky enough to see a Waxwing yet

[Elaine]

Waxwings are stunning birds...my first one was in a Morrisons car park! Needless to say, the shopping was delayed that day...I'd far rather watch any bird than do the shopping.

Re the starlings mimicry. I know they mimic sounds as they once had my friend and I fooled, whilst birdwatching at Spurn. We could hear a curlew calling and spent a good ten minutes searching the field for it, practically going bog eyed in the process. Giving my eyes a rest, I glanced up, and there on a telegraph wire was a starling singing it's head off....in Curlew!! Well, at least we hadn't dipped out on the curlew.....
I've also heard them do a respectable female mallard's cackle...that was at Spurn too.
Cheers.

[Primrose]

Waxwings are lovely. In our last house we had a resident waxwing all year round which was really unusual as we always thought that they were migratory birds. We had a tiny river at the bottom of our garden with lots of nearby alder trees on which he would feed. He wasn't hand tame, but would fly down and feed on sultanas and currants almost at our feet which made us wonder whether perhaps he had been reared in an aviary. I was very sad to leave him behind when we moved.

And yes, starlings are good at mimicry. We had one which was very good a mimicking our Trim phone which had a particular ring of its own, and more than once I'd go dashing into the house to answer it. The starling was probably up in a tree laughing his socks off.