My Spot

Saturday, May 13, 2006

The driving birds


For the past two or three weeks I've been observing a couple of starlings. They moved into our neighbourhood this year and have made themselves quite comfortable in a tree near our house. However, they have taken over all the neighbouring gardens and use them as their feeding ground. Both birds are very lively and they always make sure that there's something worth observing.

I've seen numerous bird tricks: from stunt-birds (my doves and the crows) to stealing (the magpies) and drilling into tree-trunks (the pair of nuthatches). Until a few days ago I thought I had seen them all. But the two starlings had an amazing surprise prepared for me.

When I was watchig the couple mating in the tree behind our house, I also listened to the strange sounds they produced. I've read that starlings have the ability to immitate other birds. But what I was listening to was not bird-singing... I kept listening and then it hit me: the birds were driving a car! They must have listened to the cars driving along the road nearby. They started making a sequence of sounds (like a formula, speeding) followed by one long high tone (like tires, screeching)! And they kept repeating their "driving", too! In fact their "car-trip" lasted about four or five minutes! It was absolutely amazing! I just had to laugh, because it was exactly the same sound as produced by the cars on the road! Would you believe it!?

2 Comments:

  • At May 19, 2006 12:52 AM, Blogger Mayhem said…

    Auš ti še kej pisala al te morm prit za ušesa? ;-)

     
  • At May 27, 2006 5:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    They truly are amazing mimics. The Starling is an introduced species here in Australia and are regarded as a pest species - they can destroy a fruit crop in a matter of hours. Flocks in their thousands descend on orchards. So far there are no Starlings in the fruit growing areas of Western Australia - but this has cost the state government millions of dollars over many years.

    Our resident starlings in our garden are excellent mimics too. I have to be very careful because I often will say to my wife "There's a Grey Fantail nearby (or some other species)," only to realise that the Starling is imitating said bird! A few years ago we had one that did an excellent imitation of the outside telephone bell that we have!

    Someone also reported that a starling at the Berri Caravan Park (about 2 hours drive from here) was imitating the default ring tone of a Nokia mobile phone!

    Truly amazing!

    But not as amazing as the mimicry of the Superb Lyrebird. That species is THE master mimic.

     

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