Starling Demands
This starling seems too articulate to be genuine, but apparently starlings can be big talkers: here is a website devoted to starling chat. Theirs sound a bit frightening to me, whispering endearments in a sinister way. Not sure I could live with that. The starlings outside our house just make a lot of electronic squeaks and squawks, possibly from being forced to listen to far too much bleepy music.
Comments
I discovered this post on Stumbleupon and the subject matter was just so odd that it won my blog's weekly award, the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award.
http://rantocracy.blogspot.com/2007/10/week-21-pageant-of-transmundane.html
Congratulations Emma. Before I saw this, I never knew that Starlings could speak... or that they were so creepy.
Posted by: MC | October 6, 2007 8:34 PM
Thanks MC, it's an honour...
Posted by: Emma | October 7, 2007 10:37 AM
That is indeed an articulate starling, but it sounds quite genuine to me. The voice is right. I once knew a starling that had just begun to speak, and his voice was a lot like that, whispery, like a crazy old woman muttering to herself. I don't remember what he said -- it was something like "hi sweety", with a lot of sibilant s's and clucking tee-tee-tee-tee's.
I never knew that starlings could learn to speak that clearly and consistently...I thought it was pretty much the domain of parrots. Very cool.
Posted by: bluewyvern | November 17, 2007 9:20 AM