Starlings and Sparrows

Starling (Common Starling) Sturnus vulgaris

Everyone knows the Starling. For many generations it has been one of the commonest birds in the Hull area, nesting in our roofs, feeding on our lawns and swarming over our skies in its amazing evening gatherings. The last century began with flocks of Starlings being common in the gardens of Hull, such as that of John Nicholson near Pearson Park where it also bred. In 1909 an active nest was found at Sutton on the bizarre date of 29^th November. The nest contained five half-grown young, although four were already dead and the fifth looked as if it was about to join them soon enough.

The Starling was still a very common breeding bird in Hull in the 1960s, as it was around Cottingham and doubtless everywhere else, and this continued into the 1980s. They were still described as being very common breeders around Cottingham in the mid 1990s, although numbers had been falling nationally for some time and decreases were being noted around Hull. By 1996 the Starling was no longer a daily sight around some parts of Hull's Avenues area, while numbers of nesting birds at Bransholme and across much of the region were falling throughout that decade. Starlings are still quite common breeding birds around Hull, but they are clearly in trouble at the moment and are causing a great deal of concern to conservationists.

Most Starlings synchronise their nesting to begin in April, when the ground is still soft enough to allow them to probe for grubs to feed their chicks on. From March onwards the males gain the bluish base to the bill and sit close to their nest hole, flapping their wings, puffing out their throat and reeling off their incredible song. So easily disregarded as just noisy chatter, the Starling has one of the widest vocal repertoires of any British bird and is our best mimic. The song usually begins with a wolf-whistle, followed by a clicking chatter that can then lead anywhere; one bird that sang outside my window regularly gave perfect renditions of the calls and songs of, among others, Lapwing, Redshank, Curlew, Grey Partridge, Blackbird and Great Tit. The copies were so good that I often looked around for the real thing before realising it was the Starling. They will also weave fragments of man-made sounds into their songs, with favourites being car alarms and telephones. My local bird also produced the revving of a motorbike and the 'clunking' sound of a hammer hitting concrete, the result of him listening to a neighbour during a spot of DIY.

Once the chicks hatch, around mid April, the adults form feeding flocks on areas of insect-rich pasture, playing fields or rough grassland. They can then be seen commuting backwards and forwards from their nests under the eaves of nearby houses, though they will often travel a long way to a good food source. One such feeding flock at Saltend in April 1985 numbered 150 birds and there were often up to 200 conveying grubs from the grassland off Noddle Hill Way to their insatiable broods in the roofs of Bransholme houses.

The young fledge around mid to late May and gather in dense hedgerows or thickets while their parents continue to bring food until their charges are able to follow them. In the late 1980s and early 1990s up to 500 newly fledged Starlings regularly congregated in the hawthorns off Cumbrian Way on North Bransholme at this time. Newly fledged Starlings were often brought to me by local children who thought them to be lost or injured. There was usually nothing wrong with them, except they were now separated from their parents and slowly starving to death, but I invariably found them impossible to hand rear. I have hand-reared many young birds of several species, but there is something in a Starling's nature that will not allow it to submit to hand-feeding, even to the extent that they regurgitate food that is force fed into the crop. It is almost as if they give up and prefer to die when they are isolated from their brethren.

Once the young Starlings are confident on the wing they join the adult feeding flocks to roam their neighbourhood, often seeking out pools of water in which to freshen up their plumage. Between the 15^th and 18^th May 1989 around 200 of the North Bransholme contingent, most of them juveniles, had gathered to bathe at the shallow pool just opposite Kingswood School on Wawne Road. Many of the juveniles, being fresh out of the nest, lacked the waterproofing element of their plumage and got so waterlogged that they couldn't fly. It was ridiculously easy to pick them up as they sat among the grass waiting to dry. Despite a flock of 60 adults and juveniles feeding on the Pickhills, between Cottingham and Hull, in May 1996 it is getting increasing difficult to find any of these early summer post-breeding flocks that number 100 birds or more. These late May and early June flocks are probably the best indication of the size of the breeding population in the immediate area, and it is depressing to see them dwindling in recent years.

Come June the Starlings begin to form summer roosting flocks in stands of trees, reedbeds along the Humber, dense thickets or any man-made structure with lots of perches. Saltend and the cranes around the docks are often used. Each of the local flocks initially gathers at some suitable pre-roost location. The hawthorns behind Whitehope Close on North Bransholme was the preferred site for my local birds and there is another in Queen’s Gardens. Here they may preen or chatter away for an hour or so until the sun starts to set, then they take their cue and leave for the night roost. Around 3,000 birds used to gather at a pre-roost site in Northern Cemetery during the 1960s, later moving to their night roost in the Pickhills hawthorns, off Hull Road at Cottingham. The Pickhills roost regularly contained at least 20,000 Starlings throughout late summer and autumn until the mid 1980s when it moved to the reedbeds at Saltend. A total of 21,000 were counted there in early July 1988, although the Pickhills was still used as a pre-roost site. A small summer roost in the trees near Corporation Pier in Hull came to grief in July 1963 when, after a night of heavy rain, over 100 were found waterlogged the following morning. Many were already dead, while others drowned as they tried to take off but fell into the Humber. A large number were taken to the RSPCA to be dried off before later being released. During the big freeze of early 1963, meanwhile, Starlings were dying at the rate of 50 per night at one West Ella roost.

Strangely, the summer roosts often break up during the early autumn and by August 1985 the Saltend roost was down to 10,000 birds. The daytime feeding flocks in Hull’s outlying fields increase as autumn progresses, however, as huge numbers of Continental Starlings arrive from September onwards. Flocks of 200 or more regularly joined Lapwings and Golden Plovers at Carlam Hill Farm, near North Bransholme, in the early 1990s. Up to 500 were gathering there in December 1989 and a similar number were noted among plovers on Willerby Carrs in September 1995. An East Hull feeding flock contained a pure white bird in November 1942.

As autumn turns to winter, and the number of Continental Starlings reaches a peak, the roosting sites swell with new recruits. The largest roost recorded in the Hull area was at the Pickhills site in February 1968 and represented the largest gathering of any bird ever seen in the Hull area. The figures are truly mind-boggling, with a conservative estimate of at least 200,000 birds. One observer put it closer to a million. Daily variation in numbers due to the nomadic nature of the winter visitors makes this perfectly feasible, and to see and hear a flock of a million Starlings, or any bird come to that, must have been incredible. This was something of a one-off, however, as in January 1969 the roost held only 5,000 birds. As already mentioned, however, it often reached 20,000 or more in subsequent years.

It is unlikely that the number of Starlings in the Hull area will ever again reach the dizzy heights attained during the 1960s, both in terms winter roosts and also summer breeders. Since that time much of the pasture land around the city has been converted to arable or been built on, creating less feeding opportunities for the birds. Fewer now visit us in winter and the British population is declining alarmingly, so there just aren’t as many Starlings around these days. I find this a real shame as they are wonderful birds on so many levels, be it the iridescent beauty of their plumage close up, the cheeky wolf-whistle and staggering mimicry, or the pure grace of a flock of thousands twisting and turning in unison like living smoke.

Rose-coloured Starling (Rosy Starling) Sturnus roseus

The first record of this rare vagrant from southeast Europe and Asia concerns an adult male shot at Cottingham on 26^th August 1865 which went to the Boynton collection. Another mentioned by Nelson (1907) as "Hull, Rolleston Hall, one seen, November 1901" was a little misleading in that Rolleston Hall is actually at Rolston, south of Hornsea. The second, and last, Rose-coloured Starling in the Hull area was an adult at Hessle, seen briefly on 17^th September 1994 but not relocated.

House Sparrow Passer domesticus

The House Sparrow, often less formally referred to as the Sparrow, or even 'Sparrer' in the Hull dialect, is known by virtually everyone. Many people think of the Sparrow as the commonest bird in Britain but this has never been the case and even more so today. Things have been going seriously wrong for this little grey and brown bird for the past couple of decades and there are parts of Hull that no longer support them.

House Sparrows were very common in the Hull area at the beginning of the 20^th Century, breeding in the nooks and crannies of buildings almost everywhere. Flocks were frequent in gardens and parks, where they fed on seeds and scraps, and in the outlying fields and farms where they took grain. The use of horses for transport and load carrying during the first half of the century, before the widespread use of the car or van, meant that there was plenty of feed scattered about in the form of spilt oats. This, aswell as other spilt foodstuffs at grain depots and the like, meant that the House Sparrow thrived. In 1967 Boylan could still say that the House Sparrow was a very common breeding bird in Hull, mentioning a large roost at King George Dock and smaller ones at Corporation Pier, Baker Street, Dansom Lane and elsewhere. There was also a late summer and winter roost of around 200 birds in a courtyard at the Highlands School, North Bransholme, in the 1980s. Around 30 pairs were breeding around Saltend and the Hull docks in the mid 1980s and Bonavia (1990) regarded it as a numerous resident around Cottingham. Birds were nesting in almost every roof on Bransholme around the same time. In late summer large flocks often congregated near abundant food supplies, such as ripening fields of wheat, barley and grasses, or around grain stores and farms. Up to 500 were in fields beside Old Fleet Drain, near Saltend, in August and September 1985. I often saw similar sized flocks in crop fields along Old Main Drain, North Bransholme, in the late 1980s but this had decreased to 200 in 1989, 100 in 1993 and there are probably less than a dozen today.

The decline in the number of Sparrows in places where they were once very common has been noted throughout the Hull area. Helen Crowther's 1996 survey of Hull's Avenues found Sparrows to be still common and widespread but gatherings never exceeded a dozen birds. Similarly, Paul Milsom's survey of the Priory Road fields the same year found them breeding around the farms and houses but they were nowhere numerous and the maximum flock size was just 30. Michael Flowers noted a decrease in House Sparrows at Hedon Road Cemetery since the 1980s but still regarded them as common at the Millennium, while this most typical of garden birds had completely disappeared from Peter Bonavia's Cottingham garden by 1997.

Things are just as bleak in the city centre, where small bands of cheeky Sparrows could be found in Queen's Gardens and in most streets, ready to nip between shopper's feet and steal away with a dropped chip or other titbit. In January 1999, however, Ray Eades found just 20 birds around the Johnson & Jeff seed warehouse in Hull's High Street, the last city centre stronghold. A search in spring 2001 revealed no House Sparrows anywhere in the Old Town, although I heard several birds chattering from the shrubberies in the Prospect Centre car park in June. Eades put the decline in the city centre down to the almost complete lack of residential houses and gardens in the Old Town these days. He contrasted the dearth of Sparrows there with around 10 pairs in gardens down nearby Wellington Street, on the other side of the Marina, where some people feed the birds. Several of my local House Sparrows at North Bransholme in the early 1990s often had abnormal white feathers in the wings and tail and such plumage aberrations are not that uncommon. A mostly white bird with a few brown feathers was seen at Newton Garth, between Hedon and Paull, in 1899 but it soon died after being caught and caged as a curio. A totally white bird appeared at the same place the following summer, however, but whether it was also trapped or left in peace is not recorded. Some Bransholme boys brought a newly fledged chick with completely white wings to me in 1998 and I was left with the task of hand rearing him. Only as the bird grew did I find that the white flight feathers were much weaker than the normal kind and unable to support proper flight. I kept the bird during his first summer moult, however, and many of the white feathers were then replaced by the more normal brown, enabling me to release him that autumn.

Regular streams of migrating House Sparrows were noted at the east coast watchpoints in decades gone by. There are many records of birds found dead or dying in the Hull area that were previously caught and ringed elsewhere. One ringed at Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire, on 20^th November 1964 was found dead at Cottingham the following April and a female found dead in East Hull in July 1966 was ringed at Spurn in October 1961. Other Spurn birds, ringed between October and January in the 1960s and 1970s, have been recovered in the Hull area in most months up to five years later and this indicates that there is some movement through the Hull area.

Tree Sparrow (Eurasian Tree Sparrow) Passer montanus

Nelson (1907) noted that the Tree Sparrow had undergone a substantial increase in Yorkshire during the latter part of the 19^th Century, stating that it was fairly numerous in parts of the East Riding. By 1952 Chislett could say that he seldom visited any part of the East Riding without seeing them, and scattered colonies were breeding around the periphery of Hull at that time. During the 1960s, despite a national decline, nesting was recorded around Little Switzerland (near Hessle), Snuff Mill Lane and northwest Hull, with further breeding suspected on the eastern outskirts of Hull.

Boylan (1967) reported that Tree Sparrows from outside of Hull frequently visited the suburban gardens in winter. They were also seen at Northern Cemetery and flocks were common at the western waterfront. Single Tree Sparrows occasionally visited a garden in Kirk Ella during winter in the late 1970s and 26 were at Snuff Mill Lane in December 1979, but the national decline in numbers was beginning to bite in the Hull area by the 1980s. Bonavia (1990) could only describe the Tree Sparrow as an uncommon breeding bird around Cottingham and northwest Hull for the years 1980 to 1986. A flock of 150 at Snuff Mill Lane in December 1983 indicated that there was still a healthy population in that locality, although these may have been winter immigrants. Evidence of such inward migration comes from birds found dead at Cottingham and Paull in February 1971 and July 1984 respectively. Both were ringed at Spurn the previous autumns. The regular coverage around Saltend and the docks in the mid 1980s revealed the Tree Sparrow to be a surprisingly scarce bird in that part of the Hull area, with only a handful of autumn records of one or two birds. One bird that spent several months in the company of House Sparrows in Hedon Road Cemetery in the late 1970s was the only one ever recorded there. The Tree Sparrow was found to be faring better around Bransholme, however, and up to a dozen were recorded at North Bransholme in the mid to late 1980s. A flock of 96 was at Bransholme Road (off Noddle Hill Way) on 21^st January 1988 and still numbered 70 in early February. In 1991 I discovered a small breeding colony of around five pairs in scattered copses between North Bransholme and the Holderness Drain. The colony persisted into the mid 1990s and breeding was also noted to the north of Wawne in 1994. Sadly, though, North Bransholme appeared to have been deserted by the mid 1990s.

Since 1995 the only Tree Sparrows known to breeding in the Hull area were all west of the River Hull. Around 15 pairs were found breeding off Priory Road in 1996, mainly around Willerby Carr Farm and Wood Lane Farm to the south of Cottingham. There were unconfirmed reports of Tree Sparrows in Hull's Avenues area during 1996 and small numbers of breeding birds were found at Willerby in 1998 and 1999. A bird chirping around an old oak tree at Dunswell in June 1998 was strongly suspected to be nesting there. Wintering flocks during the mid to late 1990s included 17 at Willerby Carr Farm in October 1995, 10 at North Bransholme in March 1996, 50 east of Sutton in September and October 1998 and 69 at the Bransholme Sewage Works in April 1999.

Despite a 95% decrease in numbers across Britain during the second half of the 20^th Century, it is still possible to find a few pairs of Tree Sparrows nesting in old hedgerow trees, isolated copses and around farms on the outskirts of Hull and in adjoining areas of the East Riding. Protection and monitoring of the breeding colonies is vital if we are not to lose the Tree Sparrow as a breeding bird in the Hull area. Additional help in the form of nestboxes and supplementary feeding, actions which have greatly benefited them elsewhere in Britain, may ensure that our local Tree Sparrows do not go the same was as the Lesser Redpoll.

White-throated Sparrow Zonotrichia albicollis

There is one very curious Hull record of this rare vagrant from North America and I give the details here so that readers may make up their own mind. At the beginning of 1893 G. W. Jalland spotted an odd looking Sparrow as he fed the birds on the lawn of Holderness House, a Georgian mansion on the corner of Holderness Road and Laburnum Avenue in East Hull. In those days Holderness House was on the outskirts of Hull and was mainly surrounded by fields and parkland. Jalland, an accomplished naturalist, immediately recognised that the bird was unusual and may have been "from some distant corner of the world". How right he was. The bird was still present on 13^th February when, as was usual at the time, it was shot in order to get a better look at it. John Cordeaux, the highly regarded Humber-side naturalist, identified it as an adult male White-throated Sparrow on 25^th February, when he examined it in person, and the esteemed Professor Alfred Newton (author of the landmark 1893–96 Dictionary of Birds) confirmed this. The origins of the bird were called into question from the start, however, with Thomas Nelson deciding in his The Birds of Yorkshire (1907) that it had probably escaped from a cage while being transported to Britain by ship. This theory was generally accepted by other ornithologists at the time and, as a result, this particular bird does not feature in the 'official' list of genuinely wild birds recorded in Britain. The reasoning for this attitude to the record probably stems from the belief, which was prevalent well into the 20^th Century, that North American land birds simply did not occur on our east coast in a natural state. That the bird was found a short distance from a major port was also a large factor to consider. We now know, however, that wild North American land birds have reached Britain's east coast on numerous occasions. Indeed, White-throated Sparrows in Lincolnshire and Suffolk in 1992 were readily accepted as genuinely wild birds and an American White-crowned Sparrow was recorded at Hornsea in 1977. This Hull White-throated Sparrow was, potentially, the first European record of the species and while the 'assisted passage' argument is a distinct possibility in the origins of this bird so, in my opinion, is genuine vagrancy. Unfortunately, we will never know which it was.

Postscript: In 2011 this record was re-assessed by the British Ornithologists' Union, who manage the official register of birds recorded in Britain, and is now accepted as the first record of this species in Britain (and therefore Europe). Read more here.

Zebra Finch Poephila castonotis

A very common cage and aviary bird, Zebra Finches are native to Australia but exporting the birds has been banned for many decades and the large number of captive-bred birds in Britain are virtually domesticated. Like the Budgerigar, many colour forms have been bred from the original grey and buff variety and escapees are not that uncommon. Around the size of a Blue Tit, Zebra Finches can survive quite well in warm weather and even short spells of hard weather if they can find sufficient food, though most are probably picked off by Sparrowhawks, Tawny Owls or cats before too long. An orange-cheeked, wild-type male was at large on North Bransholme in June 1989 before being caught and returned to captivity, while a white bird was also seen nearby later that summer. Their popularity as inexpensive cagebirds means that escapees can therefore turn up anywhere at any time. Despite their varying appearance they can usually be identified by their small size and 'beeping' call, similar to that of the Roadrunner in the old television cartoons!