A swirl of smoke: The season of the rosy starling

Here they behave like dada NRIs. Arriving in a cloud on a tree they will aggressively drive all the locals out. They droop and shiver, fan out their tails and charge down towards their victims, uttering a belligerent ‘chit-chit-chit’. Even if replete with sweet nectar from, say, silk-cotton or flame of the forests, they insist on having the trees to themselves. Incidentally they are major cross-pollinators of these trees.

These are birds in a hurry: their flight (like those of most mynas), is swift and direct — and they flock close together as they skim over hedges, or swirl about in the heavens. They always remind me of squadrons of Spitfires out on a mission. But they will roost en masse quite happily with other locals such as parakeets and mynas, creating an unholy din as they excitedly discuss the events of the day. They are high on kinetic energy — whether in the sky or on the ground.

Their absolute favourite food — especially for their young — has to be grasshoppers and locusts. Though farmers are not pleased with their tendency to also descend on their fields of ripening grain — such as jowar — and devastate them, their sins just have to be forgiven for the sterling pest-control they provide regarding hoppers and locusts and for mass seed dispersal. They time their breeding with the mass emergence of these insects — so their chicks can get all the protein they can ever need and consume vast amounts of them. In one area in China, this service was recognized and appreciated — farmers hospitably ensured they had ample nesting sites — homestays you could say — to encourage them to breed and control the population of locusts. Ironically, they were so successful, that the insects were all but wiped out completely, and rosy starling chicks actually died of starvation! Other items on the menu include grain, fruit, berries and other insects.

Here in Delhi, years ago, I watched them to my heart’s content in the grounds of Teen Murti House. Two enormous silk-cotton trees presided over the lawn — they were in bloom at the time. Huge goblet-like flowers lay strewn on the lawns and this large flock of rosy starlings was frenetically hopping from one fallen flower to another — occasionally leapfrogging each other in their haste to get to the next one. Then they’d whizz up into the trees and drive away even pugnacious drongos and crows that may have dared to check out the bar, chattering and warbling belligerently. And then, there’s that sudden unnerving silence as they take off en masse and do a flypast around the grounds, practising perhaps for the long journey west that lay ahead. A long time ago, one juvenile rosy starling that had been ringed in North-East Hungary was recovered in Lahore, Pakistan, a distance of some 4800 km.

At the time of writing, they are pretty much everywhere in the Capital — checking out parks and gardens and even shopping in Connaught Place, drowning out even the din caused by traffic. And sadly, the aam junta just doesn’t seem to be aware of their presence. Crammed with them, the trees here themselves seem to shiver with excitement! Needless to say, the birds have been noticed by hunters and poachers in Pakistan and North-west India and are shot for the table, being considered a delicacy.

Rosy-starlings bring up their families — three to five chicks — in the deserts and scrublands of Central and West Asia, even going as far west as the UK and Ireland if conditions are promising. Home is a hole in a wall, a crevasse or hollow.

These are birds that can enliven your day, managing somehow to pass on some of their frenetic energy to you — these are no laid-back lala birds like doves! Watch a smoke-swirl-like murmuration in the sky, watch them hector the locals, watch them play hopscotch over one another as they grub and grab for insects — and your day will be totally made!