Starlings: Your opinion

[kielder]

What is your experience of Starlings: Greedy and spiv-like? or do you appreciate their smart plumage and lively behaviour?

[cherrybee]

Greedy blighters noisy but very pretty and funny to watch.

[demicav]

I rather like them. I know they're greedy sometimes but I think they have a funny personality and their plumage is lovely. It may be off putting to some though when they start taking over the entire garden .

[glsammy]

At the moment they're costing us a fortune in fat blocks, but as we get so few birds, I'm not complaining too much.

[wildherbalian85]

Im not sure what bird it was but it might have been a starling but i couldn't see it, anyway i sat there listning to it mimic loads of other birds two of which i could I.D as a Black Bird and a Kestral.

[Bouncytigger]

I love em but they are eating me out of house and home at the minute!!

Not sure all the other garden birdies feel the same though??

The way they BARGE ,PUSH UN SHOVE THEMSELVES not only other birds left right and centre...

But the ENTERTAINMENT VALUE this last few weeks with all their youngsters
borders on winning a BAFTA award?

[ellen h]

Greedy so and so's but they are entertaining to watch.
Love to see the fledglings begging to the adults for food even though they may be capable of picking the food up themselves.
I love it too when one starling decides the birdbath belongs to him(or her!),the bickering and noise they make!
They have a lovely plumage too when the sun glances of them

[Hobjob]

We have a nesting roost in our garden - noisy, dirty, greedy, but such fun. Wouldn't be without them for anything!!

There is a quite a pecking order on the feeders though, the adult males demand / get given priority.

and as for the roosting swarm that we had over Minsmere through the winter of 06/07, that was amazing. They started again in 07/08, but some cunning Marsh Harriers thought they were easy pickings, so they moved off

[witham]

I like them and think they are hilarious to watch especially now with the antics of the young birds. We get some bigger than the parent birds sitting in almost full seed trays demanding to be fed when they could easily feed themselves yet they'll wait for mum or dad to come and do the job for them, but the funny thing is the parents fly off to another feeder then back again when they could use the food in the tray the littlies are sat on if they got their food out of that it would teach them to feed themselves

[PeteTheBloke]

I love watching them on the lawn - they seem to have an almost magical skill for finding leatherjackets. If you watch a starling and a blackbird at the same time, the starling will find 10 times the amount of food - perhaps the blackbirds don't eat leatherjackets anyway.

[Rob_D]

Noisy but full of character. I curse them when they scoff all the food, but I'd surely miss them if they were gone.

[cat72uk]

i like them but they are little piggys on the table
the poor other birds dont stand a chance

[GME]

As with the majority - they are mobbing the feeders at the moment and eating the suet blocks and fat balls faster than I can put them out! Swarmed with fledglings, noisy and dirty but definitely great to watch The other birds don't seem too bothered though. The Gold and Greenfinches in particular just sit on the seed feeders eating while they watch the Starlings mob all the other feeders. I've even seen a Starling stand on a House Sparrow while they both ate! Not for long though

[aestarte]

Hi, starlings a wonderful, they cheer you up when you are miserable and they're always talking to you plus i had the good fortune to see some baby starlings fledge yesterday which is my second species of bird that i have seen do this so YAY starlings.All my love Fi. X X X X

[andypc]

Agree with all the comments there greedy Birds but so comical too watch them feed there young.
Also knowone mentioned that they also give one of the Bird Worlds great spectacles when they mass together in there 1000's in a cloud of Starlings mirroring each other in flight unforgettable i love Starlings.

[Zoundz]

absolutely love them!

xx

[kielder]

:-) these responses are interesting, thanks for responding!

[Kayleigh]

I don't mind them, I draw the line when they take my frogs from the pond

[ogwen]

I love them, they're greedy, bully the other birds (at least they do in our garden), and are noisy but somehow I just enjoy watching them and their antics.
Theres one here that imitates a buzzard quite well . When it first started to imitate one he would send all the other birds into a panic

[nightshade]

Starlings are fascinating, their scintillating colours, their very able mimicry,
the varying lengths of bill.
I watched one as it took a perch then raised the head/neck feathers and starts what at first sounds like a nasty repetitive rasping call but listening there are all sorts of notes and trills going on, my Sparrows are nicer still

[Dalesman]

I love to watch them and my starlings seem so generous.
Most times they will eat off the ground and leave the feeders to the smaller birds.
I'm sure I read something once that there was a decline in the starling population but the chap next door has got starlings nesting behind his fascia boards so there seems to be an abundance of them around here at the moment.
If look out of the kitchen window they are in the back garden, I go outside they are on the roof or in the gutters, if I go out the front I can see them on nearly every areal along the row.

[Harold Smith]

Starlings are fascinating! They are great characters at anytime of the year! In the eighties and nineties I would regularly get anywhere between fifty and a hundred on my lawn, and it is not a large lawn. Once, in the Autumn, I counted over 200 but that was exceptional. Today I am lucky if I get anywhere between 15 or 20, including young. Though they can be noisy and greedy their biggest competition are the Wood Pigeons, who are far more greedier and chase the Starlings away when they want the feeders or tray.

[kielder]

Originally Posted by Dalesman

I love to watch them and my starlings seem so generous.
Most times they will eat off the ground and leave the feeders to the smaller birds.
I'm sure I read something once that there was a decline in the starling population but the chap next door has got starlings nesting behind his fascia boards so there seems to be an abundance of them around here at the moment.
If look out of the kitchen window they are in the back garden, I go outside they are on the roof or in the gutters, if I go out the front I can see them on nearly every areal along the row.

The Starlings we get are definitely not generous, they scare the small birds away.

[annmaria]

That was a good read, did not know they had different lengths of bill ( Thanks Nightshade )
Interesting everyone finds their antics amusing....got to be a good art idea there !
I have noticed that while other birds are busy fighting each other for a turn at food the starlings arrive in gangs and take the lot , not such a silly bird
Annmaria

[Leighsa]

From my experience they're pretty aggressive.

They like physically ramming themselves against other bigger birds who are trying to feed off the food posts.

The babies have fully fledged now and they have formed gangs to bully the other birds.

One of them had the cheek to hark at me aggressively asking for food just while we were cleaning up the dead pigeon....

I'm so sure it was them who conspired with the local cat to bump one of the pigeons off...