Jasmine Isa Qureshi

As you know, the early morning hours are the perfect time to go out and let the dawn chorus of hundreds of different birds wash over you; the robin with his light, tin-tapping chirp, the blackbird with his rich, bubbling melody, the chaffinch with his subtle scolding only to explode into a cacophony of rich squawks, the wren with his repetitive firing of chirps, and of course the loud, boisterous cawing of the herring gull. But this morning, at four o’clock, only one song stood out for me, and it stood out because it was a song that I had not heard in a very long time- it was so varied, so deep and light all of the same time, and seemed to contain bits and pieces of other bird songs all compacted together. At this point your probably expecting me to give the exciting announcement that I’ve got a parakeet in my garden, or an exotic lyrebird…but no, it could only be one bird, it was a starling.
Yes, I know I overlaid it a bit with all of that description, but you’ve got to admit that the starling is a beautiful bird; indeed, it’s so colourful that it could almost be exotic- but it’s song is something else altogether, really beautiful in my opinion, unlike any other bird I’ve heard in my garden. I just hope we can all realise how precious a bird the starling is to our gardens, and try to get it off the red list.
Unfortunately, although I stood their for about an hour with a scope, I just could not get a glimpse of it, so you’ll just have to make do with the song, but what a song that is!.