A starling role which really stole the show

THE latest series of Autumnwatch on the BBC Television was up to its usual high and stimulating levels.

I enjoyed the Autummwatch Update slightly more, especially when viewers were involved.

Of all the creatures that they portrayed, the one that stole the show for me was the starling. In the last programme, the whoopers were quite inspiring, especially as I have seen them on their breeding grounds in Iceland.

The great spotted woodpecker “asleep” on the peanuts was intriguing whilst the series of fish photography in a previous week’s programme was riveting.

With the starlings it was not the spectacular views we had of them going to roost, although this is a magnificent sight as they wheel around in such numbers and overall shapes. For me it was those intimate moments of the birds going to roost on the pier and what they were getting up to in the night.

Despite their falling numbers, I have always had a soft spot for them. One of the reasons is that I have come across them in widely different places, from the doocot in our garden to the cleatan on St Kilda and shoreline to woodland.

One of the surprises with starlings was on the first of many visits to St Kilda. In addition to impressive numbers of seabirds, there were also starlings. They sat on some of the cleatan, small old stone structures, often on the “thatched” roof.

I was staying in the Factor’s House at the time and each morning a starling would be singing from the roof. Little was I to know that this was a separate sub-species. One theory is that this is the so called Shetland starling with its main range being, as the name suggests, on Shetland. Its Latin name is “zetlandicus” but it is also supposed to be in the Western Isles including St Kilda.

As far as the Western Isles is concerned, I have seen it on a stormy beach in South Uist where they were feeding whilst turning over seaweed. What food they were getting was not clear but whatever it was it seemed to be incongruous as they were feeding side by side with turnstones that happened to be about the same size. Waders and starlings seemed an unusual combination.

The starlings in the doocot in the garden just outside the windows are a different story as they have been nesting there for a number of years. The original aim of the doocot was to have some white doves but this never worked out, largely because the female sparrow hawk and goshawk took a liking to them.

I then changed the set-up and put in smaller entrance holes, just enough for any of the small hole nesting birds. The starlings just about managed to force themselves into one or two holes. The birds were so much fun to watch I enlarged the holes slightly to make them easily accessible for them. It worked and we regularly had four or five pairs nesting.

What was interesting was that some starlings also stayed for the winter and used to assemble in the nearby ash tree before going into roost. This has not happened for the last two winters and I wonder if this is an indication of the starling’s decline in the UK.

The other interesting aspect with starlings was the predation by other birds. Sparrowhawks occasionally took an adult. On one occasion I saw the sparrowhawk come round the back of the doocot and pluck a starling from a nest hole. The starling only had its head and neck out calling and the bird of prey took it so neatly that I swear none of its body actually touched the doocot.

Since then another predator has taken some young, namely the great spotted woodpecker. Strangely enough, only the female woodpecker seems to have caught on to this food supply and one year it took all the young from the first brood.