The collective noun for starlings is either a murmuration, a chatter or a scourge, according to one online source. None of these quite capture the complete racket that this bunch made when they descended on our front lawn this morning. It was deafening. I'm not sure what they were finding to eat out there, but I hope it was a lawn pest.
3 comments:
An impressive sight and hopefully, as you suggest, they are eating a pest.
Those collective nouns for birds - endlessly fascinating and so weirdly strange!
I find starlings beautiful, sinister and destructive.
For a while, when I lived in a flat, a young starling kept turning up on his own whenever I was on the phone - and he'd stand on the windowsill, looking in at me.
I got quite put out and began to wondered if he'd been trained by the secret services and was some kind of sophisticated bugging device.
Esther Montgomery
According to the folks at Homeowner Net,(article on lawn pests), starlings love both grubs and the beetles that hatch from them, so maybe they're cleaning up your lawn for you indeed.
--Kate
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