sciencetech-blog

comments

Recently. my wife Maxeen was making the most of the sizzling weather with a spot of sunbathing in our back garden. Stripped down to her bikini, she was settled on a sun lounger with a book when she was almost blasted out of her skin by a piercing wolf whistle.

Shocked, she shot off the lounger and rushed into the house. 'Some idiot is spying on me,' she fumed.

Eager to defend my wife's honour, I raced into the garden in hot pursuit. I'd barely reached the end of the lawn before the same cheeky devil let out another rip-roaring wolf whistle.

Perched on the top of a bush, chest puffed out, he was wolf whistling at the top of his voice

And then I looked up and saw the beady eyed interloper. Not a sex pest. But a starling. Perched on the top of a bush, chest puffed out, he was wolf whistling at the top of his voice. I'm not entirely sure where he learned to wolf whistle, but the influx of skips, scaffolding and building works in my neighbourhood gave me some idea.

I wanted to laugh at my folly. As a vet for more than 40 years, I am well aware that starlings — one of Britain's most common garden birds — can imitate our voices. And with people spending more time in the garden over the summer, the birds are getting endless opportunities to listen to our conversations — and copy what they hear, even down to the exact tone.

Several years ago Maxeen and I raised an orphaned starling chick which we named Didums. He was a very quick learner and rapidly picked up the sound of our dog whistle. Soon our poor Jack Russell, Pip, was scooting out into the garden whenever Didums 'called' him.

But that wasn't all. He also learned to mimic our words. 'Didums's here,' we'd say when he hopped over to us in the morning. 'Didums's here,' he'd reply quite distinctly.

I am not for one second suggesting that he knew what the words meant. But he liked the sound of them and rapidly added them to his repertoire.

Corvids — including jackdaws, crows, ravens and jays — are just as good. Other birds may not actually be able to talk to us, but they love copying the sounds we make. Blackbirds, song thrushes, blackcaps, magpies, marsh warblers and reed warblers are all terrific mimics. They compete with each other to produce the most novel sound, which all helps them attract a mate and mark out territory.

Our wolf-whistling starling believes he's cock of the walk now he's got a new sound to impress the other birds in the neighbourhood.

Wolf whistles. Car alarms. Mobile phones. Lawn mowers. Birds will try anything that takes their fancy. It can be hugely confusing and very annoying.

Take Alison and Nathan Talbot, of Weston-super-Mare. They were constantly being woken up at 5am each morning by the wail of an ambulance siren. Not a real emergency dash to the nearby hospital, just a young blackbird showing off by mimicking the siren.

Steven Dudley, of the British Ornithologists Union, says: 'Blackbirds have the ability to mimic but they rarely use it. This one is almost certainly using his talent to attract a female mate with the intention that the unusual sounds will put off other males.'

It certainly put Nathan off when the bird then started to imitate the ring tone of his mobile. 'I could have wrung his neck,' he confessed.

If you listen to the Bird Mimicry CD compiled from recordings held by the British Library sound archive, you'll realise just how wide a repertoire our feathered friends have.

As many pet owners will know, caged birds can be trained to appropriate all manner of sounds. Those old enough will remember the famous case of Sparkie Williams, a budgie who, by the time of his death in 1962, had a vocabulary of 531 words, could say 300 sentences and perform ten different rhymes. He even landed his own bird seed commercial.

Sparkie Williams, a budgie who, by the time of his death in 1962, had a vocabulary of 531 words, could say 300 sentences and perform ten different rhymes. He even landed his own bird seed commercial

More astonishing still are examples of untrained wild birds incorporating sounds from nature into their vocal performances. There's a starling in Herefordshire sounding like an owl, a jackdaw doing a very convincing chicken impression and a Shropshire jay that neighs like a horse.

There's a raven saying 'hello' and recordings of bullfinches tutored in Germany to whistle traditional folk tunes. One track stars a blackbird in London that imitates a dial-up computer modem.

There are numerous videos on YouTube showing the magical mimickry talents of wild birds: Terry, a 13-year-old raven, raised from a baby at Tilgate Nature Centre near Crawley, West Sussex, makes very entertaining viewing as he struts around saying, 'Hello Terry,' 'Come on Terry,' and a series of strident 'Arrs'.

It seems he's recently learned to add an 's' to his 'Arrs' which makes for embarrassing listening. There are also jackdaws and starlings strutting their stuff, but they can usually only say a few words.

I have my own family of crows in the garden and I have no doubt at all that they 'talk' to me. Only last week I was sitting on my patio, sipping my coffee when the female started calling from a tree, high above my head. Over the next few minutes, she subjected me to a long, drawn-out melancholic series of staccato rasps.

I had never heard wailing like it from her — and I knew instantly what she was saying. She was calling out for her baby. Maxeen and I had watched her care devotedly for this fledgling over the past few months, amused that she still persisted in feeding it although it was almost as big as her.

But we hadn't seen the baby for several days. Now it was all too obvious that she had lost the little one — probably to a fox — and her heart was broken. I could hear it in every note of the sad, cronking call.

Sometimes birds don't need to talk to get the message across. Their body language says it all. We have three families of jackdaws — 13 birds in all. For the past few weeks they have been strutting around our garden in sullen silence, their silver-blue eyes gazing intently at the house waiting for us to venture out. And, in particular, it's Maxeen they're waiting for.

The reason? Early in the spring, Maxeen cleared out some old nests from the attic where jackdaws had hacked their way in under the fascia boards. As she collected up all the broken nests, she was scrutinised by our jackdaw mafia. Ever since they've been showing their disapproval by giving us the cold shoulder. No singing. Just silence as soon as we appear. It is quite eerie.

T hese birds possess a lot of brainpower and don't forget things. They, along with their crow-buddies, have the largest cerebral hemispheres, relative to body size, of any avian family. On various intelligence tests — to measure learning facility, clock-reading skills, and the ability to count — they have made other birds look doltish.

Bird expert Sylvia Bruce Wilmore, author of Crows, Jays, Ravens And Their Relatives, declares: 'Crows are quicker on the uptake than certain well-thought-of mammals like the cat and the monkey.' She admits her own tamed crow so effectively dominated the other animals in her household that it would even pick up the spaniel's leash and lead him around the garden!

Yet other people have had fun with rescue jackdaws they've hand-reared. One bird, Jack, was raised by wildlife film producer John Downer. As soon as the bird was mature, he was released into the wild.

However, he couldn't stay away. 'He is totally fascinated by telephones,' says Downer. 'He can hit the loudspeaker button and preset dial button. Once we came into the office to find him squawking down the phone to the travel agent.'

As jackdaws can live for up to 15 years, I just hope that if ours won't forget, they will at least forgive us.

But while jackdaws may be the cleverest birds, the best mimics — as my brush with the phantom wolf whistler proves — is definitely the starling. I've known of starlings imitating chickens laying eggs, telephones ringing, the yapping of puppies and even the grating sound of a garage door opening.

Then there was the Dublin football match which nearly had to be stopped because there were two referees blowing identical-sounding whistles.

The real referee was blowing his whistle at the proper times, but the whistle of the mysterious unseen 'official' was sounding at all the wrong times.

Yes, you've guessed, the unofficial whistle-blower was a starling perched in a nearby tree.

We released our pet starling Didums into the wild. When I look up into the sky at night and watch huge swirls of starlings making giant patterns in the sky, I wonder if he's up there among them. Has he taught the other starlings his favourite words? Are they up there somewhere, soaring and diving, all screaming: 'Didums here!'

• Malcolm Welshman is author of Pets Aplenty, published by Austin Macauley last week, price £7.99.