Starlings, pollen and Phormiums

Juvenile Starling ( c. Dick Coombes)

There's lots of interest from members of the public in exotic looking birds sporting a luminous orange head: apart from the flame coloured crown, the birds are fairly drab, greyish or beige in colour without any other distinctive markings evident.

They are of course, young Starlings, the most recently fledged birds are the plainest, later on in the summer the lines of pale spots on dark ribbons of plumage brings the birds closer to the more familiar autumn/winter plumage.

Starlings beak is well suited to accessing the long flower tube (c. Dick Coombes)

The exotic looking orange head and crown on starlings is a residue of pollen, picked up by the birds in the course of foraging for nectar from the Phormium or New Zealand Flax as it is also known.  The plant has tough, leathery, sword shaped leaves which can grow to 3 meters long, though cultivars of Phormium tenax are neater and sport a range of leaf colour combinations.  The rigid flower stalks can add up to 5 meters on the height of a plant.  The tube like flowers are bright red and produce large  quantities of nectar to attract birds such as starlings ,whose beak seems to be ideal in shape and length for accessing the flowers.

(c. Dick Coombes)

As well as Starlings, House Sparrows are known to visit the plants, I wonder have you noticed any more species availing of this source of food? 

Special thanks to my colleague, Dick Coombes, who photographed these birds on the North Wexford coast recently.