Starlings

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is about two separate populations of starlings that inhabit the seafront at Whitburn, near Sunderland. One flock, usually of about 100 birds, is often to be found either on the shore amongst the strandline seaweeds at low tide or at high tide feeding on a patch of grassland on low cliffs at the north end of the beach. They exhibit all the 'normal' starling behaviour and are very easily spooked - they spend a lot of time in flight but when they do settle they don't stay grounded for very long - when one bird takes to the air the others always follow.

Further to the south along the seafront this little group, of around a dozen birds, has adopted a completely different life style, forsaking the panicky behaviour of the flock and .....

.... instead spending their time on the promenade, oblivious to cyclists, dog walkers and passers-by and focusing all their attention ....

.... on promenaders who buy fish and chips from the shop across the road and sit and eat them leaning against the sea wall. They're waiting for someone to throw them a chip and they usually beat the resident herring gulls to the prize.




Despite abandoning the collective paranoia of the flock in favour of a life of cadging fast-food, this streetwise splinter group is in fine fettle - life on the streets suits them well - and they are clad in immaculate early winter plumage.

Unlike the flocking birds at the far end of the promenade, this individual was completely fearless, maybe expecting me to throw it a chip in return for a photo-opportunity.

Weird Eyes

Starlings aren't as common as they used to be but we've had quite a few in the garden during the present spell of cold weather. Today I noticed something odd about their eyes that I've never seen before. Above is a starling in wary mode, with its beady eyes looking all around for danger.

Here's a starling trying to feed with that rather strange technique that they use, with their beaks gaping then closing. Take a close look at where its eye is now - almost in its mouth and almost under the upper mandible.

When a starling switches from wary to feeding mode and it opens its beak wide the tension in the flesh on either side of the gape pulls the eyes forward, so that they are almost on the edge of the mouth and focused with binocular vision on the food source that it's pecking at. Imagine how their focus must flicker between near and far, and their field of view must vary between narrow and broad, every time they open and close their beak and their eyes move backwards and forwards accordingly. 

For a human comparison, it would be somewhat akin to oscillating between reading from your computer screen with both eyes, and then focusing independently with each eye on the walls on either side of the room, then back to looking at the computer screen again, every second or so.

Fruity

It looks like being a very poor year for brambles up here in Durham but it was a different story down in North East Lincolnshire at the weekend, where the blackberry bushes at the back of the sand dunes at Cleethorpes local nature reserve were laden with fast-ripening fruits.

The scrubby vegetation at the back of the dunes here is dominated by sea buckthorn, which also carried a fine crop of ripening berries, that look particularly attractive against the shrub's silver-grey foliage. Birds never seem very interested in these berries, which often are still untouched well into winter. The same can't be said for the elder berries here, which were being consumed rapidly by large, noisy flocks of starlings.

Many of the juvenile starlings were in their transitional plumage, still bearing traces of their first set of brown feathers but rapidly moulting into their smart spotty winter attire. 

Birds of a feather....

Starlings finding a convenient perch on the weathercock of the steeple of St. Cuthbert's church in Cotherstone in Teesdale this afternoon.


Cotherstone is also home of a very fine cheese.

What does it feel like to swallow a live crab...?

 After yesterday's gales the sea was a tad choppy along the Roker seafront at Sunderland today.....

.... but with reassuring British fortitude this couple were taking afternoon tea on the promenade as the waves smacked into the sea wall...

 .... meanwhile, in the sheltered mouth of the River Wear this eider duck was fishing for crabs .....

..... spending quite a while manoeuvring this one into the right position in its beak so that it could swallow it in one gulp. I wonder what it feels like to swallow a live (and very angry) crab?

Meanwhile, the rough seas and rising tide had driven the turnstones up onto the promenade .......

.... where the starlings were taking a bath in the puddles left by yesterday's torrential rain.

Starlings

Most years starlings nest in the awning over our backdoor. It's rotten, with a convenient hole in the front and should have been replaced years ago, but whenever I get around to thinking about doing that the next generation of starlings moves in. So they're welcome on two counts - I can legitimately put off the job for another year and I can also enjoy their fine, iridescent breeding plumage (double-click for a better view). When they are prospecting the site it sounds like they're running around inside with hob-nail boots on but once they are incubating eggs it all goes quiet.

When the ultra-demanding fledglings finally emerge they make their parents' life hell for a while, demanding to be fed when they could quite easily feed themselves but.....

... they gradually get the idea.

Fledgling starlings' plumage is deadly dull, compared with the wonderful iridescence of their parents' feathers but that all begins to change in the following year .........

.... when they become sharp-suited, confrontational and raucous.