Our Wild Things columnist Eric Brown considers the advantages and disadvantages of community living among birds discussed in a new book which examines flock formation, avian sociality and communal breeding
SEARCHING for birds right now, you might easily see a house sparrow. Then another and another. They just love company.
If you are lucky enough to have a pair of house martins nesting on your house there will almost certainly be others looking for puddles to provide the damp mud they need for nest building nearby.
These are suburban bird colonialists. They share our lives and our homes. While we raise families inside, they raise theirs outside. Buildings are just as important for them as they are for us.
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While some birds prefer privacy for breeding there are many others nesting so close to each other the sitting females can reach out and touch the nearest neighbour – or steal an item from their nests. This is the case in Britain’s famous seabird colonies on offshore islands and rocks rising high above the sea where guillemots, razorbills and gannets jostle for space in a squabbling mass.
Another colonial bird is the rook, whose large untidy nest often sways precariously in trees alongside motorways. Grey herons and little egrets also nest in tree colonies while sand martins and puffins can be found in sandy burrows keeping company with others of their kind.
Why and how birds choose to live communally is explained in a new book by Marianne Taylor. Marianne soon noted the communal nature of gulls during her childhood in Hastings.
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Now the author of “The Gull Next Door” has expanded her sights to examine lifestyles of many other community-based birds in her latest book, “How Birds Live Together.”
The fascinating text examines avian sociality and community breeding in detail, the benefits and the drawbacks, the challenges and the hazards.
Benefits include having multiple pairs of eyes around to spot danger from sparrowhawks, peregrine falcons, skuas or cats and regular exchange of feeding information. One of the less palatable problems with a colonial existence is that the birds living lower in the hierarchy have to put up with regular showers of excreta from loftier-perched individuals. This occurs among starlings in the famous hundreds-strong murmuration that spends winter nights on iron girders below Brighton's old pier.
An educational and entertaining read.
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