“Let’s cut down the starling roost!” Who made that decision?

share
1

Recent videos from naturewatcher

3 Four Hungry Mouths
Jun 29, 2009
5 Bird Feeder Live Webcam
Apr 27, 2009
49 videos see all

what people are saying

add a comment

2000 characters left.
First collected by naturewatcher
Mar 7, 2009
from urbanextension.wordpress.com
join Your favorite videos on the web, in one place. Start your collection now.

related videos

tags

collected by 1 person

details

45 views

original description

For years starlings have been roosting just down the road from my house in a large clump of bamboo during the winter. It’s in the front garden of a block of flats in a busy residential road. If  you happen to walk past at dusk you will see a couple of hundred starlings gathering in the sky. However, I should really say “could see” because in January (between our two coldest bits of weather) it was cut down. I was so angry and upset that it’s taken me until now to tell their story. The brown bit is where the bamboo used to stand Starlings can feed up to 10 miles away from their roost during the day but at dusk the family group will always return to the safety and warmth of their roost. As it starts to get darker the numbers increase and what looks like a giant swarm of bees dances around in the sky before plunging into their roost like little torpedos. Luckily on the 12 of January I’d taken my camera and filmed the starlings as they came in to roost. The film is 4 mins long (longer than my normal films - sorry) and shows the shape-shifting starlings zooming around above the houses. The sound track is actually the sound of them in the roost. I placed my camera near to the roost and walked a few steps back - but I thought it was an apt backing track for the film! So why did it happen? why was the roost cut down? and why was it done in such a cold patch of weather? Well I’ve heard from another resident that the next door neighbour wasn’t a fan of the starlings and had asked that they be “moved on” because they were noisy and dirty. They didn’t seem to make a lot of mess as they came in (but maybe I’m wrong) and yes they were noisy for a few minutes when they arrived, but that soon died down to total silence. However the timing of the bamboo being cut does seem to show a real lack of understands of how fine a line these birds are walking at this time of year - if they had only left it until the warmer w
Flag this Video as inappropriate or broken