altariel: (Default)
altariel ([personal profile] altariel) wrote2008-06-24 04:24 pm

Scared now

So in our back garden we have this amazing cherry tree (now much bigger than shown), and over the past couple of weeks it has been cooking up the most amazing crop (it's been hot then wet then hot again). Over the past week, the local blackbirds and starlings and assorted others have been feasting. Today I looked out and thought, "Right, time for my share," and out I went with a chair and this fine and sturdy piece of Lock'n'Lock.

The birds fled. I went round the tree for a while, picking and nomming, and I may have been humming 'Cherry Ripe'. And then I heard, up above me, high at the top of the tree, a murmuration of starlings. It became a clutter, then a gathering, then a concentration and then a fucking scary load of starlings, all yelling down the road and out far into the fens that SOME BITCH WAS NICKING ALL THE CHERRIES. All of sudden I was starring in a Hitchcock movie.

Well, the other week I faced off a huge green-eyed and hissing black cat - nay, panther - that is trying to claim our garden as its territory and has been worrying the polyamorous blackbirds in the hedge, so I thought, "Starlings, no sweat," and picked on fearlessly. It was touch and go for a bit as they rocked the tree around and screamed obscenities at me and then, WHOOSH - they all flew off. In a cloud.

Now, pie.

[identity profile] altariel.livejournal.com 2008-06-24 05:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Hah! I love your scary squirrels! There's a grey squirrel that hops around our garden but I haven't seen it trying the cherries out; it might be too scared of the starlings.

[identity profile] scottpearson.livejournal.com 2008-06-24 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)
My mom and her husband despise starlings. You can be sitting in the living room of their house, relaxing quietly, when all of a sudden they start banging on the picture window to scare the starlings away from the feeders.

Perhaps I need to give them that starling recipe!

[identity profile] altariel.livejournal.com 2008-06-25 12:09 pm (UTC)(link)
At the very least they can stick the recipe up in the window as a warning!