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Comment by zabzonk | Hacker News Reader

Working in Friesland, Netherlands, in the 1990s I used to see these flocks quite often - amazing sight. Sadly, they seem to have completely gone from the UK - I can't remember the last time I saw a single starling here.

Edit: I should say my experience is on the East of the UK - London & Lincolnshire.

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> Sadly, they seem to have completely gone from the UK - I can't remember the last time I saw a single starling here.

Anecdotal, but they are present where I live (south coast UK). We have had multiple individuals including juveniles on our bird feeders in the last month. I had to reconfigure the feeders to stop the Starlings from eating everything.

More formally, this year's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch [0] put Starlings as the third most prevalent bird, with an estimated UK population of 1.8m, although their declining numbers make them a Red List bird. [1]

[0] https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/b...

Yes, here in Suffolk the starlings are demolishing all the suet we put out - I'm watching the family fight over a feeder right now.

We have the same in Yorkshire. Being the only people in our street that seem to feed the birds we bought a bulk pack of 150 suet balls in January - the Starlings are massing like crazy and demolishing all the food we put out. Maybe I'll give up the day job and sit there and fill the feeders :) They also love bird-friendly (no salt) peanut butter.

What? Of course they haven't gone. You just actually have to be at a roosting site at the right time of year and day.

https://www.starlingsintheuk.co.uk/roost-map.html

Well, not my experience. Here in Lincoln, you never see any of them, and I do know what they look like.

I'm just north of you, and they are the most common bird in my garden. Perhaps there is something about Lincoln that they don't like? Though I can't imagine what, because it's a lovely place.

Oh well, perhaps my super power is starling repellence :) But really, I'd love to see them, but I don't.

> Sadly, they seem to have completely gone from the UK - I can't remember the last time I saw a single starling here.

They've definitely not completely gone! I live in the UK (in the Surrey hills), and see ~30-40 starlings just in my garden multiple times a day every day, since the babies fledged a couple of weeks ago. They make an almighty racket squabbling over the food in our bird feeding stations. Even when I lived in outer SW London we'd get them regularly, up to 20 at a time. And I know that down Portsmouth/Southsea way there are so many starlings they're considered a pest by some.

Come and live in my house. I had two pairs of them nesting in my roof, plus chicks, until they fledged recently. They learned to tolerate me working in the loft, reinforcing ceiling joists. I left them alone and, eventually, they all flew the nest a week or two back. They're still hanging around outside though.

I've seen pretty large murmurations a few times in recent years (this is in East Anglia).

There are plenty in and around Brighton and the South Downs, and as I mentioned in another comment, they're a common sight on the Somerset Levels - but having said that they do have a red conservation status in the UK, so it's clearly not all rosy for them.

Oddly enough, I was out walking on Wanstead flats in East London this weekend and commented just how many flocks of noisy starlings there were about. Not mumuration size (I go to Brighton for that) but flocks of a hundred or so.

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