AGENT STARLING

I have many interests but the main ones seem to be dinner and bird watching. I am not the twitcher I thought I was as H still likes to remind me that I have yet to get up at the crack of dawn to catch sight of the Lesser Spotted Dickhead known to roam these shores. I was therefore very interested to hear that I might not be jumping out of my skin anymore as I walk through the local park of an early evening. For a while now the council have been letting off fireworks in said park to get rid of the starlings that congregate or flock there around dusk. I say fireworks but as any one who lives in Spain knows they are more like canon fire and even when you feel prepared for another blast they will always catch you unawares and kick start your heart if the caffeine you've just downed hasn't already. I sometimes think it's the only cardiovascular exercise I get these days, being scared shitless by explosives and Spaniards behind a wheel. There is another method apart from the fireworks, strange noises emitting from a giant loudspeaker on top of a van being driven round and round the park in another vain attempt to shoo the birds away. I could see it wasn't working because as soon as either of these methods was put in place the starlings and the magpies just pissed off to some trees on the side of the park and crapped and sang away there instead. However, this is not the case and some 300,000 starlings are now down to 3,000 although you wouldn't know it judging from the shite that covers the benches in the park. I have been unlucky on a couple of occasions too although they say it's good luck to be shat upon from a great height by a bird, the feathered kind of course.