Starlings

 I wrote about starlings on the feeders a year ago. They are back regularly again, and can easily get through a feeder full of dried mealworms in less than a day.

This years photos are much the same as last years.

Sometimes they seem to get very annoyed with each other!

When I was finding the poems about the Long Tailed Tits a couple of weeks ago I came across mention of a book of bird poems - 'The Poetry of Birds' gathered together by Simon Armitage - before he became Poet Laureate in 2019. It mentioned that John Clare (1793 -1864) wrote  about 147 different birds without the aid of binoculars or a camera (something I'd never considered) and I wondered how many of JC's poems were in the bird book.  I couldn't reserve the book at the library because I've got 25 on order or waiting for me to pick up and that's the maximum allowed and a copy on the shelves was at Felixstowe - no plans to go there until the weather warms up a bit!

I had a look on Amazon and a copy would have been £3.80, then I looked on Abebooks and they had a copy for £2.80 - including postage so I ordered and it turned up in time to find poems about starlings for this post. (My low spend January had enough leeway for one book!)

This is the poem by John Clare from the book that mentions Starlings but he calls them Starnels, which must have been a local Northamptonshire name.

Autumn Birds

The wild duck startles like a sudden thought,

And heron slow as if it might be caught.

The flopping crows on weary wings go by

And grey beard jackdaws noising as they fly.

The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by,

And darken like a clod the evening sky.

The larks like thunder rise and suthy round,

Then drop and nestle in the stubble ground.

The wild swan hurries high and noises loud,

With white necks peering to the evening cloud

The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.

With length of tail the magpie winnows on

To neighbouring tree and leaves the distant crow

While small birds nestle in the hedge below.

Much more recently Ted Hughes (1930-1998) wrote...........

Starlings have come

A horde out of sub-Arctic Asia

Darkening nightfall, a faint sky-roar

Of pressure on the ear.

More thicken the vortex, gloomier.

A bacteria cyclone, a writhing of imps

Issuing from a hole in the horizon

Topples and blackens a whole farm.

Now a close up seething of fleas.

And now a silence -

The doom-panic mob listens, for a second.

Then, with a soft boom, they wrap you

Into their mind-warp, assembling a nightmare sky-wheel

Of escape - a Niagara

Of upward rumbling wings - that collapses again

In an unmanageable weight

Of neurotic atoms.

They're the subconscious

Of the smart-Alec, all slick hair and Adam's apple,

Sunday chimney starling.

This Elizabethan songster,

Italianate, in damask, emblematic,

Trembles his ruff, pierces the Maytime

With his perfected whistle

Of a falling bomb  - or frenzies himself

Into a Gothic, dishevelled madness,

Chattering his skeleton, sucking his brains,

Gargling his blood through a tin flute - Ah Shepster.

Suddenly such a bare dagger of listening!

Next thing - down at the bread

Screeching like a cat

Limber and saurian on your hind legs,

Tumbling the sparrows with a drop kick-

A Satanic hoodlum, a cross eyed boss,

Black body crammed with hot rubies

And Anthrax under your nails.

There are some good lines in this poem - I like  'With his perfected whistle of a falling bomb' which is very descriptive of one of the noises they make. Not sure about Anthrax under your nails that sounds a bit nasty!

 I had to look up why starlings are called Shepster and it comes from their habit of landing on sheep's backs to find and peck off ticks and flies and while doing that I found an interesting blog post by 'Squirrel basket' HERE . The most recent post from this lady mentions "Following a tree" which I'd totally forgotten about. It was something I joined in with for a few months in 2014. 

Perhaps I ought to do it again - it would fill a blog post every month.

Back Tomorrow

Sue