Welcome back starlings!

[alan refail]

For the last few days we have been seeing a couple of starlings on the bird feeders, and about six in the evening a small flock of twenty-five to thirty flying over eastwards to roost. I expect soon to see them in hundreds in the field.

[Nature's Babe]

Starlings at my bird table too, quite a few sparrows,greenfinch, various tits and also a few long tailed tits, we lost a lot of small birds last winter.

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
Strangely I do not get Starlings here. The only ones I see are the flocks of young birds around June time and these are the first fledglings of the year. I know that they mass in certain area and during the winter months these birds are generally immigrants from the continent.
I suspect the birds you are seeing may well be 'foreigners.'
JB.

[glallotments]

We get very few starlings - they used to descend it big squawking flocks but have been absent for a few years now. I wonder if people digging up lawns has affected their numbers

[alan refail]

Hi Alan,
I suspect the birds you are seeing may well be 'foreigners.'
JB.

Na ato Duw - you don't mean they might be English

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
I was thinking more Scandinavian but yes they could be English but normally English birds have got more sense than go into Wales!
English Starlings generally end up in warmer climbs such as Spain for the
winter.
JB.

[alan refail]

After a winter of plenty in our field the starlings all disappeared this week.

Mucky birds if you get underneath them, great at clearing up poultry feed left around the outside feeders, a pain on the bird feeders - but we shall miss them.

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
Strangely I saw the very same thing this week; an enormous flock of Starlings which alighted in the field opposite my property and were avidly feeding for about an hour and then as though somebody had shouted a command they all lifted off in one go and flew off at high speed. I do not get Starlings nesting here which is strange really because they are in the village 1.5 miles away. Sturnus vulgaris, certainly a very vulgar bird but also very handsome!
JB.

[Ian in Cumbria]

Hi All

This thread is interesting (especially to someone who knows little about what migrates where). I have Starlings in my garden all year round - no marked difference in numbers. They come to the feeders in groups of 6 - 12, make a lot of noise etc then fly off. You can almost hear the sighs of relief as the other birds re-emerge from where they have been hiding. Back to the thread - are we saying that the birds I see in Winter have come here from somewhere colder, and that "my" Summer birds have been somewhere else during the Winter? I understand this is the case with Robins but Starlings as well? What other birds does this apply to?

Regards

Ian

[Johnboy]

Hi Ian,
There is a small sedentary population of Starlings but they generally move to the south of England but remain within England but the normal pattern is that what you have guessed is true. The Starlings mainly in the north of England during the winter months are migrants from Europe but normally more especially Scandinavia. They come in by the thousands during the autumn generally with Field-fare, Redwing and Chaffinches and many other species. Some years we get enormous flocks of Jays and a fewer number of Nut Crackers and other members of the Crow family.
Ian it has been a wonderful hobby for me since my eighth birthday when I received a copy of the newly published Observers Book of Birds which was published in the autumn of 1937! Do you know I can remember opening my present on that day and was immediately enthralled and it has never gone away in all these years.
JB.

[Ian in Cumbria]

Hi JB

Thanks for the information. Very interesting. Yet something else I know little about.

Regards

Ian

[Monika]

Johnboy, you say "numbers of nutcrackers", do you really get nutcrackers? They are a real rarity, aren't they? I have never seen one.

[Cider Boys]

I have posted much about the Somerset Levels re the Peat Debate, but if you want to see thousands of starlings visit the levels around the old peat workings. Warning, don't open your mouth when watching them fly over you!!!

http://www.visitsomerset.co.uk/site/ins ... ion-photos

http://www.visitsomerset.co.uk/site/exp ... rmurations

Barney

[Johnboy]

Hi Monika,
Yes Nut Crackers are a real rarity but there are certain years when we have an eruption of Jays and they fly into UK by the thousand and when in Norfolk I witnessed flock after flock flying in. We thought that they were just the same flock flying in circles until we realized that we could see them far out to sea and hitting the Norfolk coast in waves.
Mixed up with the Jays there were many Nutcrackers and other odds and sods but in just one weekend I must have seen over 100 Nutcrackers.
I suspect that they return to Scandinavia in the spring because I have never heard that they have nested, at least in the Norfolk area, but am not sure countrywide and would be delighted to be proved incorrect with that statement!
JB.

[Monika]

Thank you, Johnboy, I am green with envy. We, too, occasionally have an influx of continental jays (the last one about 5 years ago) but I have never noticed nutcrackers with them. Next time, I shall look more carefully.

Speaking of rarities, about 10 years ago, I was watching a small flock of young goldcrest moving through a hawthorn hedge near our house when I thought, "Strange - one of them seems to be carrying a piece of orange peel". On looking closer, I realised it was a firecrest! I was chuffed to bits, my one and only sighting of a firecrest.