Wanna Be Starling Something

Susan likes birds. Her happiest time is staring out the window with a cup of coffee, and looking at the sparrows fluttering and tumbling about the bird house. She bought binoculars. There are books in the house to tell her how to identify the varieties of finches that flit into the garden, and she takes the time to do it. She feeds them, and they reward her by pooing all over the windows, and she doesn't mind. It's the thing that delights her. Her face is radiant as she watches them, she's transfigured. You should all have someone look at you the way Susan looks at sparrows. She glows like the sun. 

I was writing in my office (actually the dining room, which I've colonised with books and papers and cups and stains) which looks out onto the back garden, and there were a group of starlings mucking about in the garden, and one of them was a bit scruffier than the others. It must be a baby, I thought, newly fledged. We watch Springwatch in this house. I'm down with the terminology. 

The starlings were darting about all over the garden and then, suddenly, they were gone. Except for the scruffy one. It just hopped about. When it reached the centre of the lawn it started screaming. Another sparrow appeared and pushed something into its mouth. I was supposed to be working but now, with mounting terror, I thought this baby bird had fallen from the nest too soon, and it was going to die right in front of me, red on green, on Susan's lawn. 

The bird made an attempt at flight and actually got airborne. But like Icarus, hubris was its downfall. Attempting to land on the eight foot wall, it missed, banged into the brickwork and fell behind some plant pots. A sudden gang of starlings appeared squawking hysterically from roof tops and gutters. The baby bird finally emerged from behind the pots, hopping and crying out, but apparently fine.

Two cats wander through my garden all the time: a shifty black and white one, and a terrifying tortoiseshell tom who stares you out with cruel amber eyes. I was supposed to be working, but now this stricken, idiot bird hopping and screaming, had involved me in a primordial drama. It was helpless. It was clearly going to die if it didn't learn to fly. How was I going to tell Susan that a baby bird was about to be predated in her garden by some baleful domestic tiger?

We had form in this area. A few years ago I was looking out the window and my eyes met the murderous yellow-black stare of a Sparrow Hawk. It was like finding a lion on your lawn. I froze and it froze, even as its claws had pierced the chest of the pigeon beneath it. Then it just flew off, leaving the pigeon lying there inviolate on the lawn. It looked perfect. There were no feathers strewn about the grass, it wasn't leaking gizzards. It looked perfect. Whole. But it didn't move. I went out to investigate. There were two tiny red slits on the bird's breast. Keyhole sized. They didn't look lethal. But the bird didn't move and I wondered what to do. It was the front lawn and Susan was out. When she came back she would be confronted by a dead bird in her front garden. 

I consulted the internet. Without exception my unsentimental Irish friends from the country told me not to be a dick and put the corpse in a bin. Townies were more squeamish. One advised me to leave it where it was, as it was cruel to deny the Sparrow Hawk its dinner and it would definitely come back. I never saw that chicken shit bird again. I out-stared the fucker. 

I texted Susan a warning. When she returned home we made a plan.  I put on gardening gloves, picked up the pigeon - its last chance to spring to life, which it entirely failed to do - and placed it in a cardboard box. We then drove several miles to the Castle Espie Bird Sanctuary and, and this really was its last chance to resurrect - and it didn't bother it's arse - placed it in a small wood, where we hoped it would be consumed by a murder of corvids. I don't think they're that bothered about the time of death. 

I was in the middle of this reverie when there was a loud bang. The bird had managed a sophomore flight - and smacked-bang into the window. I was in shock. The bird wasn't doing too well either. It landed on the window ledge and stared in accusingly, squawking in outrage at the invisible bullshit of glass. Humans were such dicks. Susan had not heard this, though she was only in the other room.     

The bird was now wobbling about on the lawn like a drunken Big Trak. I decided to tell her, braving her shiny eyes and trembling lip. We sat there wondering what to do. By this point I had given up on the idea of doing any more writing - nature was being all red in tooth and claw on the patio, and I couldn't continue with the adventures of a load of made up people until the drama was resolved, however dreadfully. Susan went straight to action stations, looking up the fledging habits of starlings and discovering that what we were seeing was completely normal. Starlings fledge by jumping up and down on the ground screaming and drawing attention to themselves for up to two days!

How are there any starlings? How is this a viable evolutionary conclusion? There are butterflies that over countless eons have developed patterns on their wings that resemble the eyes of large predators to scare off the smaller predators that would try and eat them. The butterflies don't know this. It's just a real boon to the butterfly. Meanwhile the starling has come up with a baby bird, unable to fly, hopping around on the ground for two whole days, shouting "I'm weak and helpless. Why not eat me?" How is that their best survival strategy? 

(Though it does strongly resemble my courtship strategy.) 

The baby bird eventually hopped through a gap in the fence into next door's garden. And that was it. We don't know what happened to it after that. The starlings hung about in nervous gangs for the rest of the afternoon, but the next day they were back to normal. Did it survive? I think so. I hope so. We found no strings of offal with a beak attached strewn on the lawn. It had flown - Wright Brothers stylee - on two occasions that I'd seen. So it could nearly fly, and its wings would have been getting stronger all the time. It probably lived. 

That's certainly what I told Susan.