A Curious Critter

I promised my Instagram followers that there was a good story behind my recent watercolour of a squawking starling. I do therefore hope that the main event in this post doesn’t disappoint!

Starlings often get a pretty bad rep. Their Latin name, for example, includes the word vulgaris – I think this means ‘common’ rather than ‘disgusting’ but it still isn’t the best start! I don’t intend on adding to this bad rep with my story. I’d say that it instead highlights the curious and adventurous aspects of their personalities and those are both good traits, right?

These birds actually feature in one of my early childhood memories; looking back, it’s a funny story but it really wasn’t at the time! I was at my grandma’s house and I’d taken my furby with me (remember the old school ‘90s furbies???) and it was driving my grandma up the wall. Its repetitive ‘Furbish’ words were getting too much for her and she threatened to peg it to the washing line and let the starlings have it. I was utterly horrified and guarded my furby all day.

I remember there were always loads of starlings outside my grandma’s flat and it was only when I moved to Warwickshire that I realised I hadn’t really seen many starlings in any of the other places I’d lived as an adult. I don’t remember any in east Oxford, for instance, I don’t remember any in Elephant & Castle and I don’t remember any in West Oxfordshire. Though I didn’t realise it as a kid, starling numbers have been falling for the last few decades. According to the RSPB, starling numbers have declined in Britain by 66% since the mid-1970s. 

In Shipston-on-Stour in Warwickshire, though, we actually have a fair few. In spring, I noticed that our next door neighbour had a nest of very loud starlings in their roof and, once the cherries appeared on our tree, all of the starlings in the neighbourhood absolutely feasted on the fruit in our garden. I even drew a quick doodle of these starlings for ‘30 Days Wild’ in June – they were very noisy and were very funny to watch.

Now, it’s difficult to know where to begin with my main starling story. Thinking about it, the whole episode should probably be framed as a bit of a murder mystery. Though, I should say, no one died. A detective might just wanna get involved, if you get my drift… 

It was February 2020 – is it me or does that feel like a LONG time ago?! – and I’d had quite a busy day. I was due to do some of my volunteering straight after work but this had been cancelled. In hindsight, this was probably a very good thing. I drove home, had a quick sit down and then went upstairs to get changed. Everything seemed the same as usual when I suddenly heard an almighty bang. I ran into the spare room and tried to work out what on earth had made the noise when, out of nowhere, a starling flew up from the floor, perched on the clothes drying on the rack and looked straight at me.

I can’t remember exactly what I said at that moment. I was just beyond confused. And next thing I knew, it lunged itself at the closed window. That was really hard to watch and it was clearly (and understandably) very distressed. I shelved my most pressing questions – the main one being how on earth did it get into the house when all of the windows are shut?! – and tried to work out how to release it from the house. I opened every window on our top floor and it flew from room to room for a bit until it finally exited through the bedroom window. 

After the clean-up, I just sat in disbelief at what I’d witnessed. My first thought: did I just hallucinate. My next thought: I should google this. So that’s what I did and I learnt that starlings are very curious and clever critters. They can apparently make their way into people’s houses through loose vents and small gaps in walls. So I started checking the bathroom extractor fans (both were secure) and even checked for holes in the floor in case it had found a way through the walls and then up through the floorboards (there were no holes in the ceilings or walls anywhere). 

The most logical explanation was that it had made its way through an open window. Indeed, a starling recently tried to enter our bedroom by hopping onto the frame of an open window and then hopping into the room. But, on this February day, literally every window was shut.

This bird certainly left its mark on me for a little while. I went through a routine of closing all of the doors on the top floor religiously before leaving the house so that, if it happened again, we’d know which room the hole was in. After a few weeks, I stopped doing this and we thankfully haven’t had a repeat performance. But I always wonder if I’ll meet my starling friend again!

I wish I had a more satisfactory ending to this story but I really don’t. To this day, I still have no idea how this curious critter was able to enter my life in such a dramatic and unforgettable way. Any theories are therefore extremely welcome.

In the meantime, my watercolour will be a reminder of the curiosity of this adventurous starling and a warning of the mischief they can cause!