It is always intriguing, often exciting, to put out a new style feeder in the garden for the birds. I just could not ignore one of the many spring offers at a local garden centre and so up went a new style suet holder. It is an attractive green cage only 12 cm by 12 cm and 4 cms deep and hangs via a short chain. What appealed to me was the very wide range of suet slabs that fit neatly into the feeder and should be attractive to a number of birds. For example there was a sunflower suet feed, suet seed and peanuts, suet seed and berries etc. ten different packs in all. I hung the feeder on a suitable twig just outside the end window with the thought of taking photographs in the back of my mind. As usual with a new feeder, it was just ignored but then a surprise as the first bird to come it and tucking in was a starling. I had expected a great tit or blue tit, but not a starling. During the following few days a wide range of birds came to the new feeder from coal tits to robins and so the new feeder and feed has been an instant success. The photograph shows the superb colours of the starling at this time of the year – a bird very much underestimated as far as plumage colour is concerned.
The starlings are very much a feature of the garden since, many years ago, we put up a modern style doocot just outside the kitchen window. Once the original holes had been reduced the starlings just took over and roost there during the winter and then, as they are now, breed. There are eight holes and they would all be occupied by the starlings except for the fact that I have blocked off two of the holes. These two will be open up as soon as the first swifts arrive from their wintering quarters in Africa. This has worked in the past as both the starlings and swifts have successfully brought off chicks. Some years the starlings have been so successful that they have brought off two broods.
However, the starlings did not have it all their own way because one year the great spotted woodpeckers intervened with their breeding plans. Just when the starling chicks were about three quarters grown a female woodpecker suddenly invaded the doocot. She just reached in and systematically plucked out the chicks and flew off with them, presumably to her nest in the birch wood above the house. She repeatedly did this, we only saw the female attack them, until all the chicks had gone. Needless to say whilst all this was taking place the adult starlings were creating a great deal of noise but there was just nothing they could do against such a formidable bird as a female great spotted woodpecker.
One feature of the starlings has always been the way in which they mimic other birds and, for that matter, other sounds. One favourite is that they mimic the various calls of the curlews that nest a field away by the river and that has fooled me several times. The latest one is a mystery as one starling repeatedly sits on the chimney of the house and imitates the alarm siren of a police car. It is a very good imitation and yet where could the bird have heard it as the house is out in the country? Meanwhile we await the arrival of the swifts with some anticipation and wonder, as they have in previous years, will they just accept the starlings as their near neighbours?
Tags: highland wildlife