Q1.
Have you seen pink and black birds flying in big groups?
Answer
If you have seen a great crowd of small birds turning together in the sky like a moving cloud of smoke, then yes — you have probably seen rosy starlings. They are almost never seen alone. They travel, feed and roost in flocks of hundreds or even thousands.
What to look for:
- The colour. A grown-up rosy starling has a pink or rosy body with a black head, black wings and black tail. Young birds are much plainer — brownish and buff, like the bird drawn on page 164 — so a flock does not look all pink.
- The size. About the size of a common myna, which it is related to. Sharp yellowish-pink beak, a small crest on the head.
- The flock. The photograph on page 164 shows exactly this — thousands of birds over a green field, packed so close that the flock looks like one dark shape being poured through the air.
- The sound. A loud, chattering, squeaky noise from a tree at sunset, when the whole flock settles down together to sleep.
- The season. Winter. They arrive around October and leave by about March or April.
Why they fly in such big groups: A single small bird is easy for a hawk to catch. A thousand birds twisting and turning together confuse the hawk — it cannot fix its eye on any one bird. The flock is also useful for finding food: when one bird drops onto a field full of grasshoppers, the rest follow at once. Flying together is how a small, weak bird makes itself safe and well fed.
Go and look: In winter, watch a big tree near a field just before sunset. If the tree suddenly becomes noisy and birds keep pouring into it from every direction, you have found a roost. Stand quietly and count how long the birds keep arriving.