The beauty of togetherness
The rivalries of summer are put on hold as birds now come together in common cause as a safer way of surviving the winter months.
My own winter starling spectacular is, by comparison with flocks pictured in the press in recent days, a mere fragment of a flock. But the amazing gyrations of massed ranks of starlings, which have become so much a source of wonder in many parts of the world, have made this humble species a centre of attraction.
However, reactions to starlings can be rather variable. In America, they are apparently, according to recent polls, the most hated of all the country’s birds.
Of course, starlings are not native to America. They were, I understand, introduced to that continent by a New York pharmacist by the name of Eugene Schieffelin during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Mr Schieffelin was apparently a devotee of the works of Shakespeare and was obsessively determined to introduce to America each of the 45 birds mentioned in the bard’s work, of which the starling was one. And that may, perhaps in current political conditions, be the rub; because the starling is, in short, an immigrant!
How ironic that at roughly the same time as the grey squirrel was introduced to our shores from America, the starling was introduced to America from British stock! To say that America suited starlings may turn out to be one of the understatements of the century. Even to a greater extent than the grey squirrel has prospered here, starling numbers have literally exploded across the pond. Some flocks over there number into the millions, and a wall will not solve that problem.
However, while starling numbers in America are burgeoning, here in Europe they are declining alarmingly. Some might be oblivious to the rapid decline of a bird which many might regard as the rag, tag and bobtail of the avian world. In fact, starlings seen as individual birds are actually quite attractive and indeed, as well as their amazing aerobatics, they are also surprisingly versatile songsters. Just a day or two ago, I was stopped in my tracks by the sound of music. It wasn’t one of the usual winter songsters, a robin or a wren, so what was it, I wondered? And there, sitting on an overhead wire prattling away, was an exceptionally tuneful starling with an impressive repertoire.
Even Mozart was aware of the amazing vocal versatility of starlings. He kept a tame starling and actually managed to teach it several bars of his music. Yet I always gain the impression that when it copies other birds, a starling is prone to forget its lines halfway through! It is however, my understanding that the vocal range of your average starling may include parts of the signature tunes of as many as 20 other birds.
Additionally, in different forms of light, the starling’s iridescent plumage may reflect delicious hints of green, blue and purple. It is visually very attractive if at times inclined to verge on the comical. Therefore, a decline of in the region of 80 to 90 per cent of their numbers in Europe, over the course of the last 30 years, is unquestionably a cause for serious concern.
Its success in America has often been compared with that of the native passenger pigeon, a bird which knew such success that they used to assemble in flocks numbering not thousands, not even millions, but billions. Worryingly, passenger pigeons are now, I understand, extinct in America. That is surely a very serious message for us to take on board. Again, we have been warned!
And there they are again, my little flock of ‘black arrows’ hurtling through the gloaming, dashing hither and thither, this way and that and always somehow keeping some sort of formation albeit that is constantly reforming as it goes.
There is no leader conducting these fluid comings and goings; no permanent shape, yet no evidence of collisions despite the fact that every bird is literally just inches from its neighbours to the side, ahead, behind, above and below.
One scientific conclusion asserts that each member of that fastmoving collection of birds can relate to seven of its nearest neighbours, which enables it to respond instantly to every variation of the movement those seven birds make. Do a multitude of groups of seven birds therefore become self-controlling? Nah! Surely there’s a single brain controlling them all – isn’t there?