Evensong for Starlings

I've just been listening to starlings coming into roost.  And, as often, groaning at their conversation.

You, of course, do not speak starling. You do not know the thoughts that pass through their little feathery brains.

Which is, on the whole, just as well. The inane chatter that goes on between them doesn't bear repeating. You may not realise this, but starlings are obsessive observers of back gardens. Not particularly the important details - are there many worms, where are the cats - no.  Although they do talk about these things as well. Not that it affects their behaviour in any way - no matter how detailed their description of a 9lb, orange-and-yellow seven-year-old crossbred domestic short hair, no matter how many comments upon the precise number of minutes  the moggy spends under the Ashmead's Kernel, M26-rootstock apple tree showing signs of woolly aphid infestation and where the apples are 26% ripe, 59% just under-ripe and 15% suffering from brown rot or scab - no matter about that, their mates still promptly fly back and get eaten at exactly the time the reporting starling has said the cat has a tendency to lurk in the undergrowth (64% grass, 25% clover, with minor elements of couch grass, cleaver and ground elder),

They just love reporting detail. On and on they go. Sometimes I wish I had the ears of a homo sapiens sapiens  - how you must have laughed, at the irony of that Latin tag - instead of the nature-attuned ones of a wild man of the woods.

But of an evening, especially in early autumn, they like to gather together on a roof and take part in a church service.
I say church service. The starling religion actually consists of all the birds getting together, and disagreeing whether they're on the right roof, or whether they're on the same tiles they were yesterday, and discussing whether their services this year are the same as they were last year, when the sparrow ordained to lead such gatherings as this was the late Mr Sparrow. And how it was a great shame that Mr Sparrow was eaten by that large orange and yellow cat (9lb, seven years old, tendency to lurk under the Ashmead's Kernel etc).

So when I say church service, maybe I mean more of a PCC.