Country diary: hat-trick of starlings is cause for delight

Claxton, Norfolk: I climbed up off the marsh and there by the telegraph pole was a third kind of starling at evening song in the day's last lightOne of my more intimate wildlife encounters this year involved the rescue of two young starlings. They had somehow beetled vertically down seven metres of steel-lined pipe into the Hadean depths of our woodburner.Who knows what impressions they took from that misadventure among the wood ash, but their only possible return route to summer sunshine was via a human's thick leather gauntlet. For, as well as a persistent ear-splitting shriek, young starlings are possessed of a pink-lined stabbing blade with a musculature that enables them to slice through hard-baked earth and human flesh with astonishing ease. Even when wrapped in leather there was no relent in their urge to be free, and each starling writhed and bulked with a wonderful trapped-rat force. Continue reading...