Description of the bird

Starling songbirds belong to the Starling family of the passerine order. They not only sing melodiously and are distinguished by the abilities of mockingbirds, but also destroy insects, for which they are loved in all corners of our planet where they were brought by humans.

There are about 10 species of starlings, which differ mainly in the regions of their residence. The most famous of them is the common starling, a resident of Eurasia.

Starlings are sized birds with a long and straight beak with a slightly flattened tip, a short tail and sharp wings. Their plumage is predominantly black with white patches and a characteristic multi-colored tint.

What does it eat?

Starlings are omnivorous birds that find their food depending on the time of year.

In spring, they prefer animal food - earthworms, insects and arthropods (spiders, caterpillars, butterflies, grasshoppers). In summer and autumn, they willingly eat plant food: fruits, vegetables, berries, seeds.

Starlings can use their large and strong beak as a kind of lever to open fruits protected by a hard peel or shell.

Habitat and distribution area

The distribution range of starlings is very wide. Each species has its own characteristics in distribution, and in general, the natural habitats of these birds include all regions of Europe and Asia, as well as North Africa.

Certain species of starlings were brought by humans to the Northern and South America, Australia and New Zealand. The spread of starlings was facilitated primarily by their reputation as excellent pest fighters.

Starlings inhabit the plains and rarely climb the mountains. They willingly choose housing close to a person.

The starling's migration directly depends on its habitat. All birds living in the northern regions migrate south for the winter and are considered migratory birds. Their migration begins in September-October, and the distance that starlings travel reaches 2,000 km. Birds return to their native lands at the end of March or in April.

Starlings, which live in southern Europe and Asia and Africa, are sedentary birds.

Kinds

The bird is up to 22 cm in length with a wingspan of about 38 cm and weighs 70-80 g. The long and sharp beak is slightly curved downwards. The color of the back and belly of females and males is no different: black plumage with a metallic sheen of purple, green, blue or Brown. The species is distributed throughout Eurasia.

The species lives in southern Asia. This is a bird 20 cm in length, with a wingspan of up to 12 cm and weighing about 50 g. The back of the bird is brownish-gray, the breast and belly are beige-brown. The head is decorated with shimmering black feathers that form a crest. Beak yellow color. Sometimes the Brahminy Starling is confused with the Pink Starling, but it differs in that it does not have black feathers on its chest.

The body length of birds is up to 25 cm. The plumage of the head, neck and chest is light brown. The belly is pink-gray. The back is dark gray, sometimes with a slight metallic tint. The species lives in the countries of Indochina, including Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Lives in the south and west of China. It reaches 20-24 cm in length. Males have a white head and abdomen with a brown or gray tint. The chest, back and sides are dark gray. The plumage of the tail and wings is black with a green, blue or purple metallic tint. The beak, according to the name, of this species is red.

The main habitat of this species is south and southeast Asia. The bird is similar to the black-necked starling, but smaller in size. The male and female are very similar. The plumage of their head, throat, chest and back is black. The cheeks and lower body are white and gray. The wings and tail are brown-black with white feathers. The beak is orange-red.

The species reaches a length of 22 cm, a wingspan of up to 14 cm, a weight of 60-90 g. It is distinguished by its contrasting unusual plumage: black with a metallic sheen on the head, neck and chest and pastel pink abdomen and back. On the head there is a crest of long feathers. The beak is thicker and shorter compared to the common starling. The pink starling lives in southeastern Europe, in Central Asia.

This relatively small species lives in India and China. The body length reaches 22 cm, weight - 45 g. The bird's head is white-gray, the cheeks and back of the head have a silvery tint. The beak is interesting: blue base, green middle and yellow tip. The back is brown-gray, the belly is brown.

A songbird with a body length of up to 25 cm. Resident of East Asia. The breast, abdomen and rump of this species are light gray in color. The feathers on the head are streaked with black and black-brown; there are tufts of white feathers on the cheeks. The beak is yellow-orange with a dark tip.

The species lives on the islands of Java and Bali in Indonesia. Its body length is 22-24 cm, its wingspan is up to 130 cm. The color of the plumage of this species is mainly white, except for black wings and a tail with a white stripe at the end. The feathers on the head are brown in color and form a crest at the back of the head. The beak and legs are yellow.

One of the most major representatives a species of starling with a body length of up to 30 cm and a wingspan of up to 16 cm. Distributed in southeast China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The back, tail and wings are black with white patches, the head and belly are white. On the neck there is a collar of black shiny feathers.

Inhabitant of Europe and North Africa. Bird dimensions: 19-22 cm in length, 13-14 cm wingspan, 80-115 g weight. The species is very similar to the common starling. The predominant color of its plumage is black with a metallic tint of purple or green. The tail is short and straight. The beak is sharp and long, curved downwards.

Male and female: main differences

Sexual dimorphism in all starling species is rather weakly expressed. So, for example, the male and female common starling differ in the feathers on their chest - in females they are more graceful and shorter. In addition, females have red dots at the base of the beak, while males have a blue spot.

In other species, females and young are slightly lighter than male starlings.

Keeping at home

In captivity, a starling will need a cage with a minimum size of 70 cm by 30 cm by 45 cm with a separate container for bathing and drinking, as these birds love to swim. The water is changed daily.

What to feed

Birds are absolutely unpretentious in nutrition. The diet is often based on a nightingale mixture of grated carrots, eggs and white crackers. They also add fish food (daphnia, gammarus), meat (pieces of chicken or beef), plant and grain seeds, vegetables (everything except legumes and potatoes), herbs, pieces of fruit and berries.

The only downside to keeping these birds is their sloppiness. Starlings are truly dirty, you need to clean up after them often.

Breeding in captivity

Starlings can nest at home if the pair is provided with cozy conditions and peace. The eggs (up to 5 in one clutch) are incubated by the female for 12 days. It takes about 3 weeks for the chicks to grow up after birth.

• In nature, starlings live up to 12 years, and in captivity – even up to 20 years;
• Starlings are very aggressive towards other bird species, and can displace species from their usual habitats, as, for example, happened in North America during the conflict between the starling and the green woodpecker;
• Starlings are known as pest fighters, but they can also cause harm to humans - destroy crops of grain plants and vineyards;
• Starlings like to live in large flocks; during migration, several thousand individuals can gather together for the night.
• The synchronized migration of large flocks of starlings is called murmuration. This is a very beautiful and fascinating phenomenon - many birds seem to dance in the air, forming various intricate figures that decrease and increase in the sky. Murmuration remains a mystery in bird behavior for scientists today. This process cannot be reproduced even with the most modern technology.

Singing

Starlings are not only distinguished by their own ringing iridescent trills, which consist of whistling, creaking, hissing sounds, but are also excellent mockingbirds. Perhaps there is no melody that a starling could not reproduce. The song of a thrush, or a jay - a starling can perform any song.

Moreover, the starling can eavesdrop and perfectly copy melodies from the life around him - the croaking of frogs, the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep.

And at home, a starling can not only be tamed, but also taught to speak short phrases and tongue twisters.

Starlings willingly settle in hollows hollowed out by woodpeckers, they also nest in niches of old trees.

The first male scouts arrive to the central zone of the European part of our country following the rooks - in the second half of March. A week later, the females also appear.

Everyone receives the news of the arrival of starlings with a joyful smile: another undoubted sign of a beautiful spring.

But they are already beginning to take a liking to nesting sites. And what genuine delight it evokes in children, and also in adults, that a pair of these entertaining birds takes up residence in an artificial birdhouse!

Now just have time to watch behind this feathered family. Here is the first blue egg. And a complete clutch, according to my observations, consists of 4-6 eggs. Incubation most often begins after the penultimate egg is laid. But young birds can start this much earlier.

Two weeks passed. And inquisitive naturalists can see chicks already covered with rare down. This is where the difficult time for parents begins. For more than sixteen hours a day they hunt for food for their insatiable screamers.

They carry and carry various insects to their chicks, mainly pests of agriculture and forestry. And each chick opens its beak dozens of times a day to swallow the next portion. Chicks grow quickly with this diet. On the 20-22nd day they begin to fly away from the nest. And now, you see, they are uniting in flocks.

Observations of starlings in natural conditions are very interesting. But this was always not enough for me, and I kept birds at home, which gave me great pleasure. Starlings sing in a cage throughout the year, with the exception of the molting period, but some of them do not stop singing even in such a painful state for birds.

Certainly, buying a good bird is not an easy task. Their singing, like many other mockingbirds, is very individual. But among the mediocre singers there are those that lovers of birdsong always dream of.

Once, in one of the villages of the Kaluga region, I was able to listen to a starling, who, in addition to singing his main song, also imitated the barking of a dog, the cackling of a hen, the neighing of a foal, and even the ringing of church bells.

Starlings are very undemanding when it comes to food. You can feed them any food scraps from the table. But still, lovers should know that they prefer cottage cheese, meat, various cereals, chicken eggs, white bread dipped in milk or water. It is advisable to add mealworms, various beetles and other insects to the diet.

Starlings love to swim. Therefore, you need to place a bath of water in the cage, or even better, hang special bathing suits that are commercially available from the open door. According to my observations, starlings tolerate cold well. It seems that they fly south in the fall only because of winter lack of food.

It is no coincidence that starlings do not leave those places where they can find food in winter. In some years, in the Kuzminsky forest park of Moscow and in the adjacent territory, starlings, as if ahead of their time, even in January whistle their songs from snow-covered birdhouses.

One spring I hung a birdhouse on the third floor balcony. The next day a starling flew here. He immediately began to drag into the house he had chosen construction material- scraps of paper, last year's grass, dry leaves, ash seeds and even yellow coltsfoot inflorescences. So the male covered the bottom of the birdhouse. When his girlfriend flew to him, the two of them began to finish building the nest. Soon the eggs appeared, and then the chicks.

But sometimes the male who has settled in the house cannot find a girlfriend. In such cases, the starling is left alone.

But if you don’t bother him too much, he won’t leave his favorite place. And then, opposite the open window, as if as a sign of gratitude, the yellow-billed starling will amuse you with its songs.

Yu. Novikov, naturalist.

If birds fly around your area, it’s time to make comfortable houses for them. The birds will not only delight you with their chirping, but will also help destroy garden pests. Various caterpillars, beetles and aphids, from which you save your harvest every year - the ideal bird menu.

How to lure flying helpers to yours country cottage area, the director told Komsomolskaya Pravda public organization“Akhov’s little bird of the Batskaushchyny” Alexander VINCHEVSKY.

Starlings are great singers!

As children, many of us made birdhouses - the most popular houses for birds. But it turns out that starlings are not the best helpers at the dacha.

If you want to attract birds to your dacha that will help you clear the area of ​​pests, then pay attention to tits, flycatchers, redstarts, and wagtails. These are so-called territorial birds that collect food near their nests. But if you hang birdhouses in your dacha, the starlings will not feed on your property, but rather on your neighbors’, because these birds can live crowded and have adapted to fly for food away from the nest.

But starlings are excellent singers. These are mockingbirds that can imitate other people's voices and imitate a variety of sounds. In addition, they arrive earlier than everyone else, reviving the area already in March.

Making bird houses is not difficult (see diagrams). In fact, they differ only in the size of the taphole (inlet). If its diameter is about 5 centimeters, a starling will settle there, if it is 3.5 cm, a great tit, 3 cm, a blue tit, flycatcher, redstart or swift. In nature, these birds nest in hollows, but they will also happily settle into your houses and raise their chicks.

Perches on houses help predators, not birds

You can hang bird houses on trees and buildings until the end of April, but the best time to do this is now. For example, tits are already looking for nesting places, and in the mornings you can hear their spring mating songs. They fly around, look for housing: this house is good, we’ll be back here in April...

- How many houses can be placed on the site?

The bigger, the better. The problem happens when there are not enough houses, and the birds fight for them so much that they can even kill each other. After all, a tit lives on average 1.5-2 years, and it can be said to have the only chance in life to leave offspring. The more houses, the more chicks will fly out of the nests, the more chicks, the more insects the birds will collect on your site. It is better to place housing for birds at a distance of about 10 meters from each other.

It is very important that the boards for bird houses are untreated on the inside, not planed. This is necessary so that the chicks, who have never flown before in their lives, can get out by climbing on a rough surface (as, for example, in natural conditions - in hollows). If the walls are smooth, the fed chicks may die without being able to fly out of the nest.

Sometimes perches are attached to the houses near the entrance so that the birds can sit on them, but I do not recommend this. Such perches will help cats or martens get to the chicks.

Tits do not like drafts

The house for tits needs to be built very tightly so that there are no cracks in it - the birds check if there is a draft there. At the same time, the roof should be removable, because it is advisable to clean the house in the fall. To improve thermal insulation, birds make new bedding inside every year, which over time can clog the home. However, a dormouse (a small rodent) may settle in the house for the winter; then it is better not to disturb it and clean the house in early spring.

- Can birds at the dacha be fed in the warm season?

Some ornithologists say you shouldn't do this, but I don't see anything wrong with it. In England birds are fed all year round, they even breed and sell the larvae of various insects to make it easier for the birds to feed their chicks... Once I left my feeder with seeds in the spring, and in mid-May a family of great tits arrived. The chicks sat in a row on the tree, and the parents flew in to collect the seeds, clean them and carry them to the children! At the same time, birds will not forget how to catch insects. Still, this is a more attractive food for them than seeds. Therefore, the feeder can hang constantly, and over time the birds can get used to you and take food from your hands.

Linnets and greenfinches nest in the bushes

In addition to birds that nest in hollows and houses, linnets and greenfinches can be attracted to the site - they build nests in the bushes.

They can settle in juniper or gooseberry bushes, and the bushes should not be transparent, but rather dense. Blackbirds can nest in ivy thickets. These birds will also help you in the fight against plant pests. Of course, you shouldn’t expect the birds to destroy all harmful insects, but you will definitely notice the result, especially during the period of feeding the chicks (with the second brood it can last until mid-summer). Then the birds with their brood will begin to move to other areas.

While watching your feathered helpers, try not to disturb them - do not look into nests with chicks and eggs.

Take bats as your helpers

The appearance of bats in the countryside is more likely to frighten than delight many. But in vain! Chiropterans can also become your helpers. Only, unlike birds, they will destroy harmful insects not during the day, but at night.

There are caterpillars that hide during the day and crawl out only at night - they feed on them the bats. Don't be afraid of bats! On the contrary, you need to try to attract them to your site by making special houses for them (see diagram). It is better to place them on the facade of a house or barn, under the roof, so that cats and people do not disturb them. Now is the perfect time to build and hang them.

HAVE A QUESTION

Tits, flycatchers and redstarts do not abuse berries, but starlings are big fans of cherries. But the absence of a birdhouse will not protect the area from a flock of starlings. Other berries are not so popular among birds.

STAY IN TOUCH!

Hang the houses with the entrance to the south

It is important to hang bird houses correctly, otherwise they may remain empty.

Pay attention to the slope - a house tilted back may be left without birds, since it will be difficult for them to get out of it.

If you want to find out the name of the bird you saw, use the website florafauna.by. There you need to register, post a photo of the bird, mark on the map the place where you saw it, and experts will determine who you photographed. If you didn’t have time to photograph her, but remember what she looked like, try to find out using the interactive identifier there.

In winter, birds remaining for the winter have a difficult time. Almost all the food is hidden by snow. Many birds die.

It is advisable to regularly feed birds during the cold period.

But even if you didn’t do this during the winter, now at the end of March - beginning of April you can help those birds that survived the winter, or those that returned from wintering ahead of schedule. Now the birds are having the most difficult time, they are tired of winter and cold just like us, they have less and less strength left, and there is no available food yet...

What to feed starlings

Starlings are omnivores. They feed on both plant and animal foods. Usually starlings arrive when the snow melts. At this time, they hunt for earthworms that climb to the surface of the earth, and look for insect larvae that have overwintered in secluded places.

If you want to attract starlings to your house while there is still not much food in the spring, or if cold weather has returned to your area after the arrival of starlings and snow has fallen, then you can set up a feeder a few meters from the birdhouse. Although starlings primarily feed on animal foods, they will not refuse available plant food. Starlings can eat grains, various seeds (polls), a variety of berries and fruits of other plants (for example, apples, pears, ...)

Herald of spring, friend of the farmer, motley starling, - who has not seen him, who has not listened to his spring song! In March, upon arrival, he sits at his favorite birdhouse and sings with rare passion. It opens its beak wide, flaps and shakes its wings, throws its head back high, inflating its neck. What can you hear in this song!

We had 20 birdhouses at the Bolshevskaya biological station. Near each there is a starling. I knew these birds intimately by song, and year after year I checked to see if they had all returned to their places after their long journey to the south. One of them screamed incomparably like a sandpiper. Another imitated lentils, so much so that every time I heard it, I began to doubt: had the lentils really arrived? The third has a signature number - imitation of a sparrow: he chirped for a long time. Another one also had a sparrow's chirp, but in addition he screamed like a jackdaw and clucked like a chicken. And so each starling had something of his own, something special, a favorite song.

One of my nurseling birds spent the whole summer in a common aviary with 30 other birds. Now, wintering in my room, he remembers everything he heard in the summer. Now he will sing like a goldfinch, and the goldfinches respond to him, now he will sing like a siskin, now he will crackle with the alarming cry of a robin. Now he listens to the singing bluethroat and slowly begins to repeat its song. So they sing alternately: she, when she hears his voice, and he, having listened to her song, tries to sing the same way, occasionally letting out his own birdhouse creaks and squeals.

The starling sings very quickly, the ear barely has time to catch who he is repeating. In general, starlings are amazingly zealous singers. In the cage they sing not only in winter, but also in autumn, even during molting, which none of our birds seems to do. They say that in the south, during wintering, starlings sing their songs, just like in their homeland. There are a lot of starlings in our country, several times more than there were before Bird Day was held on a large scale. This is the result of an increase in the number of birdhouses. In the south, the starling in some places begins to harm vineyards. In the central part of the country it is now necessary to install security in orchards when cherries ripen, which was not required before. Keeping starlings in captivity seems more reprehensible than keeping any other bird. After all, they are the ones we primarily attract to the houses that we hang on Bird Day.

I remember the hypocritical noise that bird sellers and buyers made at the bird market when some guy offered to buy a dozen young starlings from him. And at the same time, these same sellers tried to sell unknowing people “birch warblers” (as Moscow poultry farmers call the pied flycatcher), birds doomed to death in captivity and hardly less useful than the starling. It is worth keeping a starling in captivity.

Firstly, this is the only insectivorous bird in our country, the number of which is now quite sufficient. Therefore, keeping starlings in captivity will not affect the benefits brought by this species on the farm. Secondly, there is no doubt that the starling tolerates captivity very easily. You can destroy him in a cage only by not caring about him at all. And finally, thirdly, the starling can be used as a useful bird at home. If it is completely tame, then it can be kept in the garden or vegetable garden and taught to collect harmful insects.

The starling gets used to people very quickly, even becoming annoying. He has an excellent memory and distinguishes them well. This bird has special trust only in its owner and becomes completely wild with those who have harmed it. No matter who describes the starling, everyone considers it a wonderful bird for captivity. Naumann writes: “It is strange that starlings are so rarely kept in captivity. Keeping them costs absolutely no effort, and they can provide plenty of pleasure. The starling, even caught in old age, is very easily tamed and is, without a doubt, one of the most pleasant indoor birds.

The starling is constantly cheerful and active, quick in its movements, attentive to everything that happens around it, curious to the extreme: it tries to inspect and feel everything with its beak. He lives quite tolerably in the same room with other birds and sometimes only bothers them with his eternal restlessness and extreme curiosity. One day I was greatly amused by the extreme flying and noise in the cage. I went up to her and saw that the biggest prankster of my starlings had got himself from somewhere big piece white paper and, holding it in his beak, flies after other birds, apparently rejoicing at their vain fear and cry."

Male starlings quite easily learn to pronounce some words of human speech. A great lover and connoisseur of songbirds, I. I. Goremykin convinced me that females are also capable of this. One such bird said two words: “squawk” and “hush, hush.” M.P. Vavilov writes about a starling who knew the prayer “Our Father” (it has about fifty words, including prepositions and conjunctions).

A starling's cage should be somewhat special. First of all, it needs to be done large sizes, according to the height of the bird, which likes to run around the floor. A cage with a bottom area of ​​30X50 cm is just enough. Secondly, the bottom drawer, if it is retractable, must be deep, at least 2-3 cm. The whole of it is covered with sand. The starling is very voracious and gets dirty a lot, and most importantly, it constantly digs into the sand with its beak: it sticks it in and then forcefully opens it so that the sand flies in all directions. Thirdly, part of the grille 15-20 cm from the bottom must be covered from the outside with strips of glass or plywood so that the bird does not litter and splash when bathing.

Black-necked Starling (Sturnus nigricollis)

The starling loves to swim perhaps more than any other bird. The cage has to be covered with newspaper, and it gets wet through and through. And finally, the bathing suit, feeder and drink must be firmly fixed or they must be very heavy, for example clay: the bird tries to pick them up from below with its beak and instantly knocks over ordinary jars. For small birds, starlings are not at all dangerous, as is sometimes believed. I had a hatchling and a captured starling living in my large enclosure. Both of them never offended anyone. True, all the birds gave way to them, but the starlings never took advantage of their obvious advantages in strength: they lived as if not noticing their neighbors. The starlings were only at enmity with each other, but then suddenly they became friends. Wherever the fosterling flew, the Savage (he really was comparatively wild) followed him. So they ate, drank, bathed and rested on a branch together. However, in a small indoor cage, one of these starlings completely terrorized the robin that was sitting with it. I had to seat them.

You can feed the starling everything that any bird eats, including corvids: bread, any porridge, cottage cheese, raw and boiled meat, all kinds of grain (including hemp, which he swallows whole), carrots, apples, rowan berries, elderberry, cherries, chicken egg, greens, ant eggs, mealworms and earthworms, and you can’t count them all. My starlings lived on white bread, soaked in milk (and often in water), and various berries (most often dry elderberry), which were constantly kept in the birds’ cage. Once a day, a thimbleful of ant eggs (usually dry) was given; sometimes - one of the foods listed above and irregularly - mealworms. Everyone who approached the cage considered it his duty to give the starling two or three worms. He always begged for them from those who came into the room, screaming and fluttering his wings. The starling took worms through the grate directly from his hands.

Feeding a starling taken from a nest is almost as easy as feeding a jackdaw or a crow, and it gets used to it well. I kept fosterlings more than once, and they were all funny and cute birds, favorites of our family and everyone around us. One of them, picked up crumpled and with blood on his head (he was pulled out of the nest before my eyes by a jackdaw), was the darling of the whole village. He flew everywhere, everywhere he was greeted with affection and fed. However, he didn’t let anyone get his hands on him and didn’t let him get close to him. Only when I arrived at the dacha in the evening from work and whistled quietly, standing in the middle of the village street, my squirrel invariably flew off from some birch tree and sat on my shoulder. Having become friends with dogs (they were always in our house), the starling stopped being afraid of cats. This is what ruined him. The cat caught the starling when it flew to the neighbors' terrace, where it often received tidbits.

Another of my fosterlings even became a film artist. He starred in three films and played leading roles in two of them. According to the script, it was necessary to show how a starling looks for harmful insects and feeds their chicks with them. He conscientiously plowed a large piece of the garden with his beak until he finally found a cockchafer larva, which, however, had been placed in the ground in advance. The nesting bird flew to its house as if to feed the chicks and stuck its head into the entrance, although the birdhouse was empty and stood at a height of 1 m from the ground, next to a movie camera that was crackling, filming my fosterling at point-blank range, close-up.

It turned out to be quite easy to accustom the starling to all this. All it took was a little patience. So, from the second or third larva buried in front of the starling’s eyes, he already understood what was required of him. And with a birdhouse it’s even simpler: the starling was first given mealworms in it. The ratchet was used to accustom him to the sound of a movie camera. He wasn’t afraid of people before. That's all. Judge for yourself whether it is difficult to teach a starling different things.

Our last little bird was raised by students at Zvenigorodskaya biological station. He was needed for experiments. It was planted in a meadow or forest under a gauze canopy over a platform of a certain size. The bird conscientiously looked for all the insects here. Observers, whom the starling, of course, was not at all afraid of, recorded his every movement. So he “counted” all the insects for us at the experimental site, and we found out how much time he needed to destroy them. We finished working with the starling and released him into the wild, fortunately he knew how to feed on insects himself and flew excellently.

Where should he, a human fosterling, go? I'm used to people, but I'm not used to starlings. So he flew all over our territory. Sometimes he was seen on the river, in the morning - near the tents, and at lunch, of course, near the dining room.

A tame starling that flies freely around the garden can be trained to exterminate pests. Once you show him where the gooseberry moth caterpillar is hiding in a currant or gooseberry, the bird will conscientiously inspect the bushes and swallow insects.

Having discovered and tasted the cabbage white caterpillars, the starling will diligently begin to inspect the cabbage heads in the garden and, of course, collect pests better than a human would. The bird “works” where the owner places it or where he is: tame birds love to be close to humans.

In a room where there are a lot of flies, a starling, even without any training, can be engaged in catching them from morning to evening - a very useful task for us and, apparently, pleasant for him. He can eat up to a thousand flies in a day, which means his help is not insignificant. Every true bird lover should get himself “free” starlings whenever possible. In a village, in a country house, in a small town, you can always hang one or several birdhouses near the house. Their size inside is 13 X 13 X 28 cm or a little more, the diameter of the entrance is about 5 cm. You need to put together a birdhouse more tightly, without gaps, from boards 2 cm thick and hang it on any tree higher, 8-10 m from the ground. If the house has a garden or vegetable garden, then starlings will not only entertain the owner with their cheerful songs, but, by collecting harmful insects, they will also take care of a good harvest.

A relative of our common starling lives in the south of the country, mainly in its Asian part. This is the pink starling - an ever-wandering flock of birds, a famous locust destroyer. Services it provides agriculture Central Asia and the Lower Volga region are very large. The pink starling is rare, much less common than the myna, and is found in captivity. Its advantages include, first of all, its beautiful appearance. The combination of pink and black colors is very impressive. Unfortunately, in captivity it loses its bright color at the first molt. This bird, like all starlings, is very active, fast in its movements and unusually voracious.

Literature: K.N. Blagoslonov. Birds in captivity. Moscow, 1960