Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Starlings


The invasion of starlings is like a scene from a horror movie! They descend by the thousands and the noise of their arrival is unmistakable! It is difficult to describe the sound that thousands of birds make as they land on your roof and surrounding land. It is quite eerie to say the least!


My neighbor's roof was covered but they quickly flew away as I rounded the corner to get a picture. I usually shoo them away, even resorting to banging a spoon on a pan to make noise.

We have many Bradford and Cleveland pear trees in our neighborhood and the berries are consumed by the starlings. A large flock of them will land on a tree and withing minutes it is stripped of the berries.

Photo taken 2011
From
The robins also eat the berries. They will stay in our area all winter as long as they have food. I have a robin here and she has been protecting her tree by chasing away any bird that lands in it. Of course she can't chase away thousands of starlings. I'm glad I was home to help protect her tree!

After the starlings eat their fill or rather, after they consume everything in their path, they fly off leaving their corrosive, red berry droppings all over houses and cars. Oh, how I loathe them!

Robin

4 comments:

Ruth Hiebert said...

Starlings are a nuisance at best,but to have an invasion of them would be disgusting.

LindaCrochets said...

They are horrible in numbers, but the robins are nice. When we were in Wyoming we had the robins all summer; even had them nesting in a fur tree in the backyard. Loved to watch them!

Hilary said...

Wow.. that's a large flock. I don't usually see them in such numbers. Your robin image is lovely.

Indie said...

Starlings are pretty terrible. Thankfully I haven't seen them in such large numbers here (knocking on wood!)