Goodness, Readers, I love this time of year. The Great Tit nestlings are still chirruping away in the nest box, and yesterday morning the sound was augmented by the wheezing sound of starling fledglings. I love the way that their parents ‘park’ them on a branch while they get some suet pellets, and then pop back to feed them. They are very clear about which fledgling is theirs, though they all look very similar to my untutored eyes. Maybe there’s something about the sound, as there is with many birds? This is the sound of a single fledgling begging for food, recorded by David Darrell-Lambert at Rainham Marsh. Imagine it magnified fifty-fold, and you’ve got an idea of what my garden can sound like at 5 a.m.

It’s the most dangerous time for fledglings – they are naïve, they can’t fly as well as their parents, and they are prone to predation by everything from crows and magpies to cats. Sometimes they fall into the pond and  I have to rescue them with a net, even though there are plenty of places to get out. But fortunately a fair number survive, and turn up in the whitebeam in mid-May as they’ve done for at least the last fifteen years.

Starlings are renowned mimics, and many times I’ve walked along our road, heard a bird and looked up with excitement, only to see that it’s a starling. For an idea of their vocal range, have a look here…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1s1YNwlM8g

And here’s a poem. A good description of a murmuration, I think, and it’s about so many other things…

Starlings
Maggie Smith 

The starlings choose one piece of sky above the river

and pour themselves in. Like a thousand arrows

pointing in unison one way, then another. That bit of blue

doesn’t belong to them, and they don’t belong to the sky,

or to the earth. Isn’t that what you’ve been taught—nothing is ours?

Haven’t you learned to keep the loosest possible hold?

The small portion of sky boils with birds.

Near the river’s edge, one birch has a knot so much

like an eye, you think it sees you. But of course it doesn’t.