To naturalists like me, who are knocking on a bit, the idea of the starling being a rare bird seems to be very strange.

It is not so long ago that headlines in the then Evening Telegraph focused on the huge flocks of wintering starlings roosted on the buildings of our town centres.

When starlings gather in flocks to roost, they first swirl about in their thousands and from a distance they look like a twisting cloud of smoke.

There is no doubt that the starling originated as a woodland bird siting its nest in hollow trees and feeding on insects and worms. They are one of the few birds which have learned to live in the urban environment.

Their song is not very attractive but they have proved to be excellent mimics and can copy the sounds of other birds which can be confusing. I had a friend who often left his gardening to answer the telephone only to find that it has gone dead. It took him some time before he realised it was a starling copying the phone sound!

The starling has been called an ugly bird but this was only when it was so common that it was a nuisance. The less common it gets the more beautiful its shiny speckled plumage seems to be.

What we need is a balance between the present situated and the winter flocks which once caused chaos in East Lancashire town centres!