$&!?#@% Starlings

[astral276]

Despite all the propaganda the council spouts about reducing the environmental impact of development they actually do very little or nothing at all to protect it.

Don't get me started on councils (and councillors) - I'll end up getting banned from forums.

[HerMajesty]

Agree with you all. And Councils are, well.........I agree with Astral. There are loads of brown and other sites homes could be built upon, but they aim for prime farmland and flood-prone areas first.Here in the country we have a lot of birds...and we don't put out pesticides or herbicides, so they have a good chance of enjoying life if they hang around here. We back onto a woods, so there is a lot of cover from the birds of prey in all the hedges, as well. Haven't see the magpies yet this year, but we have two resident crows, about 10 blackbirds, lots of chaffinches, a few dunnocks sometimes, lots of different kinds of tits, two woodpeckers (red and black ones) and have seen a green one a few times. There are at least 2 wrens in the area, as a baby landed on my kitchen windowsill a year ago. Some thrushes, a couple nuthatches, an occasional starling, a pair of buzzards, occasional owls, our seasonal pheasant, and een have seen 10 long-tailed tits one snowy winter all hovering around several fat balls. Have never ben anywhere that I could watch such a variety of birds....I love it.

[theElench]

[QUOTE and een have seen 10 long-tailed tits one snowy winter all hovering around several fat balls. Have never ben anywhere that I could watch such a variety of birds....I love it.[/QUOTE]

Around where I live I know there are robins, blue tits, dunnocks and wrens which I can hear, the third floor is too high to see them. The last thrush flew into a moving car a few years back and I haven't seen one since. It used to sing beautifully on the top of the telegraph pole outside the flats. Blackbirds seem to be fewer every year, they used to be a common sight but not now.

There are also what I think are rooks that come and go at intervals. Magpies seem to have become bolder and now live permanently among the houses and sometimes I see or hear a jay.

When I'm working I travel around a five or six mile radius from where I live and see and hear wood-peckers, usually what we call common green ones but occaisionaly one that is black and white with a red crest. In the winter I see a lot of wag-tails that for some reason like to run about in Sainsburys car park. I have, very rarely seen a goldcrest and yellow wag-tails but they might come from the continent during the summer.

From the way you wrote "even seen long tailed tits" they must be rare where you live, here they seem to be one bird that is increasing in number. The last time I saw any was when I lived in Hastings in the 70s and didn't see any here untill about ten years ago. Now as I go around the area I regularly hear them going from garden to garden calling to each other. I've often wondered if it is the same flock or several.

It's such a shame that although there are a few of so many birds about their numbers decline constantly. An old lady I worked for in a local village was born in a road called The Finches because chaff-finches and green finches nested in hundreds there. They seem to have gone completely. Her neighbour who was a farm worker all his life remembered having to shout to be heard over the noise of swallows and martins at harvest time in the fields, they've mostly gone. I remember when I was very young and out with my father we would often try to spot the sky-lark we could hear singing high above, haven't heard one for years. Even in the London suburbs in the 60s the dawn chorus was loud enough to be noticeable to a child.

One of the saddest things I've experienced in the last few years was when I was cutting a long hedge in the last house of a village surrounded by fields and didn't see or hear a single bird all day.