It’s been almost 20 years since we moved into our 100 year old red brick house. When we first moved in, we found this house to be too big for our little family of 3. Our old house was historically a rooming house with 3 floors and a basement, and 7 bedrooms! With a lot of largely unoccupied space, we figured that we could house some tenants.

We proceeded to convert the third floor to an apartment. However, when the time came to rent the place out, the third floor was deemed to be unrentable unless we put a fire escape. We were unwilling to do this because it would ruin our beautiful house. Instead we decided to rent out the second floor.

Our bedrooms are now on floor 3, and we have a cute living cum kitchen. The kitchen has a smoke vent and a chimney, but we don’t cook there.

Enter the starlings! One pioneer couple discovered the missing brick that was the vent of our unused third floor kitchen. They went inside the hole, and discovered the chimney. They made it their home, and had babies. Since then, generations of starlings have raised their babies in the chimney . This brings up the question, whose house is it anyway? Ours, who are still in the process of raising our one generation of kids, or starlings’, who have likely raised 15 generations since the time that hole in the wall came to existence? I think we know the answer, although we daren’t say it!

As every year, we sit on our deck and enjoy watching the busy starlings buzzing about. During the day we can hear the little baby starlings chirping from inside the chimney.

As long as we live in this house, so will our starling housemates.