{"id":285187,"date":"2025-11-26T23:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T23:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/285187\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T23:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T23:14:12","slug":"huge-swarm-of-starlings-and-magpies-invade-garden-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/285187\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge swarm of starlings and magpies invade garden in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  Danielle Piggott of Derby caught the spectacle on her Ring Stick Up Cam Battery, where approximately 100 birds landed in her garden.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  In a statement from Ring, they said: &#8220;What started as a regular day in her garden turned into a scene straight out of The Birds, as a massive flock of starlings (and a few cheeky magpies) swarmed her bird feeders.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Discussing the footage, Danielle said: &#8220;The starlings (and magpies) have learnt the sound of me opening the shed and will gather on the surrounding rooftops waiting for me to finish and go inside.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  &#8220;On this day, I barely closed the back door before they all swarmed over. Usually it&#8217;s only 10-15 starlings but on that day there must have been at least 100!\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Danielle has made a deliberate effort to encourage birds into her garden as she loves watching them.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  She shared: &#8220;The magpies that visit my garden are hilarious, they tap on my back door or perch on the fence and squawk if I&#8217;m late with feeding in the morning or the feeders are empty.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Professor Anne Goodenough, Applied Ecologist at the University of Gloucestershire, explained why this unusual event might have occurred.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  She said: \u201cAll the birds are starlings and are being attracted by the food in the green feeder \u2013 it\u2019s a mixed group of young birds (brownish in colour) and adults (all dark) all noisily trying to beat the others to the food\u2026 literally trying to sort out a pecking order!\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cAs there are both adults and young birds in the mix, I\u2019d say there were several nests close by.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  She continued: &#8220;Starlings are a gregarious species, so larger groups are more likely, especially when they are attracted to food.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>  Do starlings stay in the UK all year?<\/p>\n<p>\n  Most starlings are resident in the UK all year, but some are migratory, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woodlandtrust.org.uk\/trees-woods-and-wildlife\/animals\/birds\/starling\/?ref=ed_direct\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Woodland Trust.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Recommended reading:\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The organisation adds: &#8220;They travel from northern Europe to spend the winter here, arriving during September and October. They will return home during February and March.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  As a whole, the species is &#8220;widespread and abundant&#8221; across the UK, except for the Highlands of Scotland.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  They can be found in gardens, parks and farmland, with there being approximately 1.8 million in the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Danielle Piggott of Derby caught the spectacle on her Ring Stick Up Cam Battery, where approximately 100 birds&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-285187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}