Starlings create 'cock of hay' for nest in attic of Limerick home
IT’S BEEN such a strange time that Pat Hourigan barely batted an eyelid when he heard a hissing sound coming from above his bedroom ceiling last summer.
But as it began to keep his eyelids open at night, instead of firmly shut, he decided to take action.
Pat, who is the Leader’s long-serving Caherconlish local notes correspondent, wondered whether his house in the village was haunted.
Now and again, the hissing was replaced by a rumbling sound. Pat prayed to something much higher than his attic but that didn’t solve the problem either.
He then turned to a knowledgeable friend who told him, “Ah! ‘Tis only a few mice in the attic”.
“He told me to buy a plug-in repeller and said, ‘It will solve the attic problem’,” recounted Pat.
However, his sleep deprivation continued and was compounded by his pocket being deprived of €50 – the cost of the repeller.
Pat gave up on his friend’s advice and decided to weather his interrupted sleep patterns.
“Strangely, the hissing and rumbling seemed to fade away and changed into a series of little squeaks and eventually everything fell silent,” said Pat.
Fast forward to 2022 and a recently discovered central heating problem that necessitated turning off the supply of water to the expansion tank in the attic.
“I climbed up the ladder through the ceiling hatch with torch in hand. As I searched for the location of the tank the beam of light from my torch picked up a very strange looking object set against the gable wall,” said Pat.
After the hissing sounds of last year most of us would have turned on our heels and made for the hills but to coin a phrase from the film Ghostbusters, Pat “ain't afraid of no ghost”.
“On closer examination, lo and behold, I found the answer to last summer’s hissing and rumbling noises. The object was the largest constructed starling nest I ever observed. My feathered family had flown their nest.
“Some farmer, I mused, must be missing a cock of hay for on its removal it measured four coal bags full of the finest driest hay and straw that would leave a hungry cow salivating at the mouth,” said Pat.
He was filled with admiration for his feathered friends for “the effort and time it must have taken the hen starling and her monogamous mate to transport each and every strand of building material through an air vent – and to construct such an enormous breeding maternity unit”.
“Though for fire prevention reasons I had to discard the large nest I decided to construct a safer hatching abode for their return. And it will be soundproof,” said Pat.