Sounds of Nature Project
This Project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Scottish Natural Heritage
SOUNDS OF NATURE – Starlings and more
The Field Club’s Sounds of Nature Project was inspired by a chance encounter in May 2019 between two Assynt Field Club members and Clive Davis who was holidaying in Assynt. Clive, who is a member of the Wildlife Sound Recording Society, was making sound recordings of birds, etc. in the area.
The mental health benefits of listening to bird song and other sounds of nature have been well reported. Our website is by necessity very visual, both with regards to images and words. This project’s aim therefore is to make our site, and hence Assynt’s wildlife, more accessible and meaningful for those with a visual or other physical impairment.
More information about the project along with links to other recordings can be found on the website’s Sounds of Nature Project page.
SOUNDS OF NATURE – Starlings and more (David Haines, January 2025)
For the week ending 12th January 2025 Assynt, like most of the Highlands, was in the grip of proper winter weather. Snow, ice and temperatures well below freezing for the week.
These are the times that garden birds are in real need of our help to find enough food to survive. We feed the birds all year but increase the refill visits. This helps to ensure that there is food first thing in the morning and late afternoon. That means lots of busy, chattering visitors most of the daylight hours. It’s great!
Andy Summers, the Senior Countryside Ranger for Highlife Highland contacted us during the week looking for photos of Starlings. He was writing a blog for the Ranger Service about these charismatic birds. We obliged and decided that we could maybe compliment his writing with a sound recording for our own website.
Recording
In order to minimise the disturbance we set up the recording equipment at the same time as the first feeder fill on Saturday the 11th. It was left recording for just short of four hours so, we had a lot to listen to.
The attached recording lasts for 7m 30s, the main soundtrack is provided by Starlings with a few other species as accompaniment. Starlings are well known for their ‘chatter’ and incorporating other bird and some man made sounds into it. A few of the bird sounds audible but not produced by the Starlings on this extract include: Rock Dove, Hooded Crow, Chaffinch, Blackbird and House Sparrow.
A Blackbird becomes quite vocal as the time approaches 5 minutes. It suddenly emits an alarm call, you immediately hear all the other birds react by flying away. A few seconds later normal service is resumed. Most bird species are programmed to react to the alarm calls of other species as well as their own. A survival strategy that makes a lot of sense: why wait until one of your own spots a danger? The ability to react to any warning can provide extra time that could be life saving.
Enjoy, and as ever the best way to listen is through headphones.
Words and photos by David Haines