Interesting facts about the bird of the year 2018

They are native wherever they find suitable breeding places, such as tree hollows, abandoned nests of other conspecifics or, at best, nesting boxes. If you don't have all of this and can't even remember these 20 cm long cave breeders, just listen to this fascinating singing talent on the German bird song portal just look at it.

The little animals, which one cannot deny a certain social ability with humans, not only like cherries, they also like delicious, ripe grapes very much. If the “common thief” weren't marked in the photo, you would probably find it very difficult to spot, right? After his appetite was not disturbed or even chased away by the author of this article for a few days, he put his trust in them Mankind even to the point that he approached within a meter in order to serenade the donors thank you. Out of sheer emotion, a considerable part of the grape harvest was voluntarily dispensed with, so that this jolly fellow with his followers was one of our regular guests throughout the summer counted.

The starling population in Europe is currently between 23 and 56 million animals. That only seems huge at first glance, because in the last 20 years in Germany alone we have approx. lost a million of our native pairs of starlings. The reasons for this are not entirely new: the intensive use but also the loss of meadows, Fields and pastures cause acute food shortages for the starlings, as they hardly have any worms and insects Find. The massive use of agrochemicals is increasingly destroying food animals, which are also of existential importance for many other bird species.

In addition, there is a lack of berry-bearing hedges and nesting sites, as many older trees in particular have been cut down with suitable nesting holes for the animals. During the 1970s, starlings were even seen as a threat to wine cultures, so their breeding grounds were blown up with dynamite or the birds with the massive use of powered aircraft chased away. However, Sturnus vulgaris is not only a "grape robber", but also considerably reduces the population of insects, which in turn threaten our vegetable and flower beds.

How garden owners can help

So that the bird of the year does not soon become one of the losers of this century, a lot can be done with simple means to actively help the animals fight for survival. Gardening close to nature instead of carefully tended uniform greenery attracts birds, it does not enrich our lives only acoustically and visually, but contributes considerably to the biological balance in our nature at. We should therefore:

• provide suitable nesting sites;
• Set up nesting boxes with entry holes of different sizes for a wide variety of bird species;
• instead of field stone-coated steel gabions, bird-friendly berry trees such as elder, Plant wild roses, hawthorn or barberry;
• Make space for the well-known Wildflower meadowwhich, with a colorful mixture of bird flowers and herbs, becomes the perfect food base for the feathered fellows.

Our next post will deal with completely different types of plants and they will definitely not be flown over by hungry starlings.