Starling spotlight
- Crone
- Jun 18, 2024
- 1 min read
OK... so this was filmed BEFORE I stopped... or slowed... the filming and photographing.
The starlings are charismatic and very loud. I love the kohl eyeliner effect on the babies.
I mentioned that the parents seem to feed their own fledglings, I had a sense that they were choosing whom to feed, but of course I can't be sure. Sometimes, it seemed, a baby would beg so much and an adult turn to another... the first so eager that they then fell off the fence and had to flutter back into position.
When they are not in the lilacs or cherry tree, they are in the park, finding grubs in the grass. There, they are like a calm herd of grazers, until something startles them and they all fly off as one.
The constant chatter - calls from the young to adults and to each other, and adults to babies, alarm calls and whistles - is interspersed with a wonderful song of percussion and melody that I really should try to record.
Though the iridescence and star-spangling of adult plumage is glorious, I also find the suede-soft mink of the youngsters very alluring - that and the eye-markings.
Starlings have a big presence, so it surprises me, in the park, to realise how small they are in reality.
I enjoyed your focus on starlings. I have grown over the years to like starlings very much. I like their interesting variety of whistles and calls. I love how they graze on the grass on our back lawn like a herd of cows, and come & leave together. I like your images of them in the trees and bushes. I've never noticed then feeding the babies or the "eye-liner" -- so I want to watch more carefully.