The Birds! The Birds!!

 

There been a lot of this recently - great dollops of starlings swirling around the skies and fields surrounding Damson Cottage. When they land, they look like writhing masses of insects, you know, like in the Indiana Jones films where Dr Jones insists on taking his leading lady into inhospitable caves (she is, of course, suitably dressed for the experience in high heels, a tight sequinned frock and full make up), and the cave walls and floors are invariable smothered in all sorts of heebie-jeebie insect and reptile life. Eeeek!! 

That’s what these thousands of starlings look like when they are swarming across the fields. Thank goodness we aren’t in a cave, that’s all I can say.

Anyway, a rather irksome side effect of this influx of starlings is that some of them have realised there is a rather tasty birdie feeding station in the vicinity (5* reviews in ‘What Bird?’ magazine restaurant reviews) and their little bird brains have decided that rather sticking with their flock, they would rather form a break-out guerrilla group and feast in style on peanuts, fat balls and sunflower seeds rather than in field on whatever grossness they can pick up there.

Now, I can fully appreciate the beauty of a starling, what with their shimmering coats of inky blues and purples dotted with white spots. They are, I suppose, rather endearing characters, a sort of Dick van Dyke Bert the Chimney Sweep Cockney bird, all noise and brashness and wide-legged strutting. They are a bird of enormous ego. They are also a bird of pushy greed. 

I set that bird feeding station up for the little birds - the tits and finches, the robins and wrens. I have extended special membership to two woodpeckers, the blackbird gents and their lady blackbirds, a pair of very polite collared doves and a pheasant. And the jay family, who are due to arrive in the next month or so. I did NOT set it up to be ransacked by a Fagin’s gang of hooligan starlings. 

But what can you do, eh? Apart from fling the kitchen window open every now and again to scatter the starling build up. The other birds are used to me doing this and they mostly stay put, clinging onto the feeders and rolling their little birdie eyes as if to say, ‘There she goes again, flaunting her bird prejudices in public.’ 

Anyway, on Tuesday I was in the kitchen sweeping the floor, when a terrible screaming hullabaloo started up. Awful, it was - plaintive, blood-curdling screeching. And there, outside on the driveway, just beneath the triple fat ball feeder, was a sparrowhawk, pinning a starling to the gravel and with a murderous glint in its beautiful amber eyes.

I stood and watched. Sparrowhawk on the verge of committing slaughter, starling flat on its back and flailing for its life helpless at its assassin’s power.

What do you do, eh? This is Nature, after all. You should just observe, shouldn’t you? Or hide behind the sofa? Wish for it to be over quickly? You shouldn’t interfere, should you? The Circle of Life and all that jazz? Nature - red in tooth and claw. 

Well, I am afraid I DID interfere. I reasoned that I had become an inadvertent participant in this act of Nature and therefore I had been given the opportunity to intervene and change the course of that particular incident. If that sparrowhawk was meant to dine on starling that day, then I would not have been sweeping the kitchen floor and heard the kerfuffle, would I? I’d have been upstairs in my office listening to PopMaster on Radio 2, wouldn’t I? Or cleaning my teeth, or ironing my face with my new jade face roller.

But no. I was there, at the scene, a bit part actor with capacity for action. And I rushed outside, because the screaming was heart-rending by now.

The sparrowhawk flew up, the starling still in its claws and screaming like a loon. The starling struggled and managed to free itself, launching itself into the hedge and the sparrowhawk tried to follow but the hedge was too dense and so it flew up into the second oak tree along, presumably to sulk and to plot its revenge on me.

I’m sorry I spoiled the sparrowhawk’s breakfast plans. I am sure it won’t starve given there are plenty of starlings around at the moment for it to have another go, preferably away from my birdie restaurant. 

And I am pleased that little starling lived to see another day. But they still need to go and stuff their faces elsewhere...