Starling chicks early this year

Since moving to Paddock wood in the early 1990’s, each year I have had starlings nesting in my loft. In all this time only one nest has failed and with each nest producing four or five chicks, I reckon around 100 young starling have fledged whilst I have lived in my house; which is pleasing news.

Adult starling returning with food for the chicks.

However on a European scale, starling numbers have plummeted by an estimated 40 million birds since the 1980’s. Yes, that is 40 million less starlings in the last 25-30 years. If there was a European wildlife profit & loss account, then the figure in the ‘starling column’ would read  minus 40,000,000 !!!

In the UK the population has halved over the same period and in 2002 the starling was added to the UK ‘red list’ of the birds of (most) conservation concern. 

Starling population trend from the BTO website

Nearly fourteen years on we still have no definitive list of the causes for this decline, but agricultural intensification, a move away from mixed farms and indiscriminate use of pesticides must be playing a large part. Starlings feed in pastures and in urban areas, lawns and sports fields etc, using their stout beaks to probe for invertebrates, particularly leatherjackets (cranefly larvae).

Like many other species, since the 1960’s the conversion of the countryside into a food factory, with little space of wildlife, has forced starlings to seek a living in towns & cities, but in drastically reduced numbers. I can still remember walking home from school in the early 1970’s watching vast flocks of starlings flying overhead for minutes at a time, but that doesn’t occur any more, except near to known starling roosting sites.

Anyway, back to my little starling nest, it’s great to watch the adults bringing back food to their rapidly growing chicks and to hear them chirping in the loft, as each food parcel arrives &  I am not the only one in the town have these lodgers every spring. Many of the houses on my estate, built in 1960, have the same gaps under the tiles, which allow the birds access to a safe nesting area. Equally I know of houses in the Green Lane area, built in the mid 1990’s which have the same gaps in the roof design, in which starlings make the most of.

If I had could ask for one wish from the house designers it would be to design the new homes in Paddock Wood with gaps for the starlings to exploit. In that way there would not only be 1000 new homes for people, but 1000 new starling nesting sites as well :-).

A large loft eave area, with gaps for starlings to enter.

Back to the title of this post …’ starling chicks early this year’, compared to previous years they are amazingly early, for normally I don’t hear the chicks until May, at the earliest. The British Trust for Ornithology website state that egg laying usually starts around St Georges Day  - 23^rd April, with an incubation time of 12 -15 days. My birds must have starting laying their eggs around 8 – 10 April this year, about fortnight ahead of schedule.

The winter just passed was the warmest since national records began in 1910 and was 2c above average. In fact compared to the Central England Temperature record series (the longest temperature record in the world dating back to 1659) this winter has been the second-warmest at 6.7c, just behind the previous record of 6.8c set 1869.

So although there have been cold arctic winds for large periods this spring, maybe the warm winter has kept the ground temperatures higher than normal, prompting the soil invertebrate population (the starling’s main food) to increase earlier this spring and the starlings are synchronizing their nesting time with this seasonal abundance of leatherjackets etc. in the lawns and open parks around the town.

Who knows, but it’s great to once again wake in the morning to the chirping of hungry chicks; all be it a little earlier this year.