This video says about itself:
Juvenile Starlings drinking and bathing in a seed tray.
Filmed in a garden in Cheshire, UK, on the 11th of July, 2006.
Watch for the starling surfing on another one, at 1 minute and 3 seconds into the video!
At 2 minutes, 43 seconds, the camera shakes – this is a starling landing on the camera! He takes off again at 2 mins 49.
From World Science:
Pollution may make birds change their tune
Feb. 28, 2008
Courtesy Public Library of Science and World Science staff
Nothing like a bird chirping in the morning to remind you of nature’s glory, right?
Maybe not quite. A rather creepy new research finding suggests some bird songs are a bit unnatural—influenced by pollutants, which cause at least one species of birds to change their songs.
It’s the latest of a number of studies to note that some of pollution’s biological effects are not only unhealthy, but bizarre. Studies have found contaminants causing sex changes, for example, or even possibly raising suicide and child abuse rates.
In the bird study, interestingly, researchers found that the revised, more elaborate tunes were appealing to female birds. But the affected birds also suffered weak immune systems, the investigators said.
The scientists studied male European starlings, Stumus vulgaris, feeding on earthworms at a sewage treatment works in the southwest U.K. Many of the worms were found to be contaminated with chemicals similar to estrogen, a hormone involved in the development of sexual characteristics.
Singing to females makes male birds’ brains happy: here.
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