Wildlife with Sharon Boardman, November 8, 2008 (From Worcester News)

Wildlife with Sharon Boardman, November 8, 2008

11:09am Wednesday 12th November 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

NATURE in October is full of colour and action. This is the time of year when you can see deer rutting, with stags locking antlers in a dramatic head-to-head battle, and with hedgehogs busying about, stocking up on food before hibernation.

In the bird world, the kids have now flown the nest and the grownups are free agents – not tied to a territory, nest or youngsters for at least a couple of months. All they are responsible for right now is their own survival. You would think that they would enjoy this freedom and keep to themselves, but October is actually all about sticking together.

All around us – in gardens, hedgerows and woodlands – we’ll see gatherings of birds of various species moving through the area in loose, mixed feeding flocks. You may be lucky, and suddenly find yourself surrounded by blue, great and coal tits, goldcrests and chaffinches, twittering and feeding hungrily in one small area.

The solitary robin in your garden is one of the exceptions – she would much rather be left on her own. Flocking together is a time-honoured survival mechanism, no doubt about that. There’s a safety in numbers because together the birds are more likely to spot a predator, such as a sparrowhawk, before it’s too late.

But this is probably just one of the reasons birds flock in winter.

Flocks are like an outdoor classroom – a place of learning.

Being part of a flock help the birds discover rich feeding areas that they didn’t know about. The birds that come to my seed feeder probably found out about it from others who stumbled across it. It is also a place to learn new tricks from the more successful ones that the birds can add to their repertoire.

If you use your ears, you can improve your odds of encountering these feeding flocks.

The birds keep in touch with one another using short, quiet ‘contact’ calls, which, roughly translated, mean ‘I’m here – where are you?’ One of the birds that are known to form large flocks in winter is the starling. In my own patch on the outskirts of Worcester, I have noticed that the numbers of starlings have gradually been building up on telephone wires at dusk. It brings a smile to my face when I see them sitting there like pearls on a string, chattering to each other using a wonderful mayhem of whistles, warbles, pops and clicks.

Starlings gather in large groups on treetops and telephone wires before joining up with other groups in large roosts in woodland and reedbeds. Down in Brighton they even roost on the pier!

To read more about our work or to support us, log on to rspb.org.uk.

● Sharon Boardman is the people engagement officer for the RSPB.