For the last week or so, the most notable visitors to the bird table (yes, I’m old) have been starlings. Growing up they were regarded as really very common birds, of no real interest to anyone, but they’re now on a red list having seen an 80% fall in numbers.

At first glance, they were an odd crowd indeed with the dark speckled adults mingling with dull brown fledglings that seemed to have outgrown their parents. It looked for all the world as if two different species had suddenly decided to flock together.

Starlings lay eggs, hatch and fledge their young all at much of the same time presumably to maximise their chances in the face of predators. An entire flock of starling parents on the look out for cats (or whatever) will be more vigilant.

It makes for a noisy garden. They can only really access the open mesh feeder so the smaller tits still have a decent food supply, once the mob of starlings has flown off but at the moment I’m just enjoying them interact.

There are a number of collective nouns for a group of starlings, starting with a murmuration of starlings for those wonderful mass flights that seem more like abstract art in the skies. From the sounds in my garden, this lot could definitely qualify as a chatter of starlings bt my favourite, based on the almost continuous squabbling from the fledglings is a vulgarity of starling.

That feels just about right.