The Real Sussex Air Show

Starlings, you either love them or hate them! Personally, I love them; they are real characters, noisy, boisterous but well worth taking time out to watch their behaviour and how they relate to one another, and indeed other birds.

Those in the ‘hate them’ category point out the mess they make, particularly if you live in a town or city where they tend to congregate in their tens of thousands in the evenings, especially in winter where they chatter noisily on buildings and trees before they settle down for the night. I freely admit that it must be a bit annoying to have your car, house and garden covered in starling mess and in Rome the numbers are so prolific that residents in some areas have to go about with umbrellas even when it’s not raining!

People that feed birds in the garden often complain that starlings dominate the bird table; they are the playground ‘bullies’ forcing the smaller birds to the sidelines. They definitely have a swagger about them that can be a bit intimidating to others, and then they go and nest in your roof space bringing up their raucous youngsters that wake you up at dawn.

If you can look beyond the negatives, living alongside starlings can be a very enjoyable experience. An adult in full plumage is a very fine sight; the iridescent feathers gleaming purples, greens, yellows and blues in the full sun - the real pearly kings and queens of the avian world. To some they appear gaudy but in their own way they are every bit as colourful as some of their tropical counterparts.

They are very social birds too. My television aerial can attract up to 50 starlings at once and most afternoons in winter they will congregate on it and seem to chat amongst themselves swapping stories about how they have spent the day. Before dusk, they suddenly all rise up and join the thousands of other starlings heading for a night on the town in Brighton.

Starlings are brilliant mimics too. Because they nest colonially the males have to use any means possible to attract a mate and they do this through song. By mimicking other birds, or even man-made sounds, they are more likely to attract a female as they are drawn to the male that has the best variety in its song. I’ve heard starlings in my garden imitate buzzards, magpies, yellowhammers and chickens, not to mention impersonating a telephone ring tone!

Television has allowed us to see some of the world’s spectacular wildlife sights; wildebeest in the Serengeti, monarch butterflies migrating to Mexico, twirling masses of sardines off the coast of South Africa, all containing jaw dropping numbers almost incomprehensible to imagine. But we in Sussex can also experience a sight of equal beauty and magnitude.  All you have to do is go to somewhere like Brighton, Eastbourne or Chichester in late afternoon in winter and you can witness magnificent aerial displays as tens of thousands of starlings merge together in one big flock.

Swirling around low over the sea they create extraordinary shapes and patterns in the sky, all turning together in a split imperceptible second. It is truly a display of the highest art, and it’s all ours for free!

If you take the time to go and witness these displays then I’m sure your view of starlings will change. A natural phenomenon which us humans, try as we might, will never be able to match.

www.sussexwt.org.uk

by Mike Russell of the Sussex Wildlife Trust

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