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
I live in rural Wales, and sometimes it's hard to know which birds are actually singing if there are Starlings nearby as they imitate so many of them. I've not heard one use a human voice yet, though.
I used to live in North London and the best mimic I ever heard/saw was a Mynah bird at the Clissold Park children's zoo. You'd not have known the words it spoke were coming from a bird. Mind you, it's language was pretty ripe, not surprising considering the locals who talked to it...!
Posted by: Val Erde | May 12, 2010 12:55 AM