STARLING STAR

MISTER STARLING

Mister Starling soon bores

Of gasps and applause

From the rapt and ecstatic

At his feats aerobatic

So he has a few sessions

Of skits and impressions

Pretending to be

With a whistle or three

Other things he has heard,

Klaxon, car horn, Blackbird,

Mobile phone on vibrate

To impress his new mate.

In motley he dresses

Punky bad-hair-day tresses,

Sturnus vulgaris ought

Be called vulgar for short,

But without each wild antic,

Balletic and frantic

Roof and garden no doubt

Would be poorer without.

Startling Starling!

This little fella, a baby starling, ricocheted with a loud bang into my window this afternoon.

Stunned baby starling after face-planting at 40 mph into my window!

His little beak took the full impact. Naturally he was totally stunned. He spent the next ten minutes on the ground, twitching in various awkward positions. I went out for a while to stroke him very gently so he would stop struggling and made sure he was out of the open where our local Sparrowhawk wouldn't spot him for a ready meal!

Gasping and blinking, he clung onto my finger with his foot, so I knew he had a little life and fight still in him! There was just a tiny drop of blood at the tip of his beak, where it had hit the glass, but no other signs of damage.

Eventually, he righted himself and tentatively tried to fly, first skittering against the fence, then bumping the glass again, but he soon got his bearings and flew under the nearby hedge. Here he rested for a while longer before flying away to join his many brothers and sisters who have been noisily pestering their parents for food for the last few days.

I don't know if I'll recognise him among their number in the future. If he can learn to feed properly with that sore beak-end, he should do just fine! A few of my local starlings have similar minor infirmities like bent feet and legs, but they adapt, move forward with their little lives and survive as well as the next.

I hope the best for little Beaky, too.

Maybe he'll now be wiser about glass than all his siblings! Maybe deep in his being, he'll remember that somewhere out in this bewildering blue dome of threats and struggles, one big strange featherless creature soothed his ruffled feathers with a touch as tender as the breeze, and whispered reassurances; that when his universe turned upside down with a smack and left him shellshocked and stranded on earth, another presence wished him well and stayed nearby till he was safe and strong enough to fly away to freedom.

But little creatures are often more a blessing to us than we can be to them. I'll remember him long after he's forgotten his adventure in my garden today. There's the joy of having a privileged glimpse into God's amazing universe of miracles!

Busy birds (and a very cheeky grey squirrel!)

Birds are full of the joys of spring now. Pairing up, gathering nesting material, shouting about how they are the best specimen on show! 

This morning a Goldfinch ventured closer than usual to the house. They often feed at a distance on the niger seeds in a hanging feeder under the fruit tree. Today, four of them were chasing each other up and down, feeding on the seeds of the lilac, flying up to the top of the aspen and sycamores, whizzing through willow and ash, twittering and giggling together. The one seen here came up as far as the pergola to enjoy the sunflower hearts!


Meanwhile, one of my cheeky grey squirrels came to try its luck with the different foods on offer. Here you can see it tucking into to the mixed seeds in a hanging feeder.


The starlings in these photos are enjoying the hopper newly topped up with suet and insect pellets.


House sparrows, both male and female, and a male blackbird can also be seen in these snaps, noisily helping themselves to all they need to be in optimum breeding condition.


I didn't manage to snap the collared dove this morning, but she was busy collecting thin twigs for her nest in a nearby conifer hedge. I'll try again another day.


Here's today's snaps, taken with a Nikon Coolpix 3700 3.2 mega pixel resolution 3x optical zoom-Nikkor lens, shooting through a Barr & Stroud Sahara 15-45 x 60 spotting scope on tripod: