Starling cull in Rome?

[Two_Sheds]

I caught this story on BBC news this morning ...they are playing megaphones at the trees to scare off the roosting starlings.
I thought it was a joke, but apparently not ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wil...droppings.html

[Stacey Steve]

They did a similar thing over the starlings in Leicester Square some years ago, There were thousands of them roosting there and it made the footpaths quite dangerous to walk on, let alone it was unpleasant for people visiting of a evening.

[Flummery]

I was half asleep when I heard this - and dreaming. (Himself goes into the bathroom first these days and I'd nodded off again). I heard the sound of the baby starling in distress and it got incorporated into my dream as some sort of scantily clad banshee. Quite horrid!

[smallblueplanet]

Its not a cull is it, they're just moving them on, according to BBC news this a.m.

[cupcake]

Seem to remember them doing this in Bradford many moons ago! This was a baby in my garden earlier this year

I rushed back into the house for my camera and couldn't believe my luck when it was still there when I got back! I took a couple of snaps, then retreated, and it's mum came and enticed it away a couple of minutes later.

[Izi]

I love to see the starlings flying on an evening doing their arial manouveres.
They visit our garden quite a lot and we feel honoured to have them, they seem to be eating the seeds from the seedhead left on the cabbage palm.

But then you can have too much of a good thing I guess.
In a city anything in abundance can become a menace.
Izi.

[BrideXIII]

I love to see the starlings flying on an evening doing their arial manouveres.
They visit our garden quite a lot and we feel honoured to have them, they seem to be eating the seeds from the seedhead left on the cabbage palm.

But then you can have too much of a good thing I guess.
In a city anything in abundance can become a menace.
Izi.

especially people with megaphones it seems

[Tam]

The Chinese had famines following the tremendous bird culls they had (in the 60s ?) and you can understand it when you learn how many leatherjackets starlings feed to their young.

[Alice]

I saw the films of the starlings over Rome. It was nightmare stuff. I love the birds and encourage them to my garden. But the starlings over Rome looked like a plague that had to be dealt with in some kind of way.

[poozie]

My mum has so many starlings in her garden that she actually hides from them. She loves all her birds but if the starlings spy her by her kitchen window they gather and make the most tremendous racket until she puts the food out. She says she feels like her every move is watched, poor woman can't even make a cup of tea in peace. She also has a blackbird who sits on her back door mat inside the kitchen waiting for food.

I on the other hand have a woodmouse who stands up my window and looks for me if we forget to put food out.

[Nicos]

Did you know they can talk???

YouTube - talking bird starling

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GtQCHD...eature=related

* remember it's illegal in the UKto hold a wild bird captive*

[Alice]

Thanks for that Nicos.
I've never heard one talking but they can imitate all the other birds - and the phone ringing !

[poozie]

we used to get one sit outside our bedroom window and mimic my husbands mobile phone alarm.

[sewer rat]

When I was a kid growing up in Glasgow, the starlings were like a plague every night in the city centre. The council tried scaring themoff with hawks and other birds of prey - to no avail. Then they tried the distress calls through loudhalers mounted on vans - to no avail.
Eventually they draped all the buildings that the stukkies used to roost on with netting so they couldn't land and eventually the stukkies moved on elsewhere.
I have to admit that seeing them flying into the city in the evenings in great clouds was pretty breathtaking though.