Door to Nature: The European Starling

A starling eats suet with a hairy woodpecker waiting its turn. Photo by Roy Lukes.

A friend recently asked me about some birds producing weird songs comprised of a rapid succession of squeaks, wheezes, chatters, chips and other strange sounds. What else could they possibly be at this season but starlings?

This black songbird, about the size of a robin, having a long pointed beak, short swept-back wings and a stubby tail, is well known. That’s right. It is a songbird and an excellent mimic at that. However, it doesn’t rank with the mockingbird or brown thrasher in expertise.

A fascinating story in the American Scientist, Volume 78 (page 106-114) tells in part of Mozart’s pet starling of three years, and that a theme credited to the singing of his pet bird, occurs in the final movement of the Piano Concerto in G Major, K.453.

Captive starlings have been found to be able to mimic many sounds including human words and phrases, music, throat clearing, coughing, laughing, kissing, squeaking door, barking dogs, keys rattling and an alarm clock. Unfortunately for their owners, starlings sometimes have a bad habit of vocalizing at times during the middle of the night.

It was in 1890 that 80 European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) were released into a new environment, the North American continent. Little did Eugene Schieffelin, who engineered the plan, realize the seriousness of that act. Quite innocently he and his band of followers were attempting to introduce to the United States all of the plants and animals mentioned in the works of Shakespeare.

It is estimated today that there exist on the North American continent about 200 million starlings, and their numbers are growing. Indeed, they are here to stay.

They especially like cities for their abundance of available food, nesting sites and a general lack of predators. Then, too, there are plenty of chimneys to help warm these wheezy-voiced opportunists in winter. Frequently on a very cold day you will see starlings perched around the tops of chimneys making use of the warm rising air from within.

This front view of a starling shows how close to its beak the eyes are. Photo by Roy Lukes.

Starlings undergo a single feather molt between late July and early September. Many of their black feathers during the cold months will be tipped with a light tan or white “V” marking, like one point of a star. These “star points” give the bird a speckled appearance from a distance. In addition their beaks will be dark.

Gradually during the winter and early spring these light feather edges and tips wear off. By spring the bird is a shiny, glossy black laced with iridescent shades of bronze, blue, green and lilac. Their beaks then become yellow.

Because of their strong legs and feet, these “least loved birds” give the appearance of being the proud possessors of a quick, nervous, cocky waddle. They don’t hop as most other songbirds do.

This omnivorous bird is considered by many to be of great importance in the balance of nature, which is struggling at best. Because of its voracious appetite for injurious critters, including land snails, cutworms, grasshoppers and Japanese beetles, one simply must recognize their value in the natural world.

My Kewaunee friend Elmer DeCramer, wise in the ways of many birds, heard me complain about the starlings one day and immediately sided with the black bandits. He advised me to watch a starling closely the next time I saw one strutting on the lawn. When I did I noticed the bird would drive its closed spear-like beak straight down into the grass, then open it up, spreading apart the blades of grass as it searched for insects. In this industrious manner the methodical little hunter consumed one insect after another, harmful or otherwise.

A starling’s eyes are situated toward the front of its head close to the beak, angled slightly inward, and the bird can perfectly and efficiently scan the ground opened to its view by its spreading beak. This highly successful and intelligent creature is perfectly adapted to locating insects among the low-growing ground vegetation.

It is during fruit-ripening time that starlings become serious pests. They can virtually destroy an entire cherry, apple or pear crop or grapes in a vineyard. Their autumn appetite for fruit is legendary and is known in most countries of the world including New Zealand where they were introduced by Europeans in 1862. Starlings, along with their partners in crime, the house sparrows, are very likely the most common birds in the world today. Fortunately the house sparrows appear to be decreasing in number.

Starlings associate with man amazingly well. As various forms of agriculture succeed, so do starlings. Those noisy nuisances reached Wisconsin in about 1923, and within 30 years they had become securely established over the entire west coast of America. Their abundance is compounded by the fact that some starlings have been known to live to be 18 years old.

If you’ve never seen the starlings’ intricate evening aerial maneuvers en masse as they return to roost, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. This mysterious wide-sweeping social dance, sometimes staged by several million at a time, is thought to help keep the flock together and also make it difficult for predatory birds to catch them. Go online and search for “amazing starlings murmuration” to see a YouTube video of them in England.

Supposing that native songbirds of this country could talk, many of the hole-nesters would be bitterly opposed to the fierce aggressive takeover tactics of the starlings. Wrens, bluebirds, nuthatches, tree swallows, woodpeckers, crested flycatchers and purple martins have all suffered the encroachment of these foreigners. If it makes a difference in your outlook toward these creatures, the starlings and house sparrows are not protected by law as are our native birds.

Whether you appreciate the starling is a matter for individual decision, but the more one observes and learns about this nest robber, garbage eater, musical mimic, destroyer of harmful insects and connoisseur of fruit, the more one thinks of the starling as the Jekyll-and-Hyde of the bird world.