You probably know that starlings can form huge flocks (I’ve had a few moderately sized ones descend on my backyard before), but the spectacle of some of the larger ones is otherworldly:



The phenomenon is so impressive and seasonably reliable in southwestern Denmark that they have a name for it: sorta sol, or “black sun”. It’s on my list of astounding avian spectacles that I have to see before I die, along with the springtime arrival of the Snow geese in the Canadian tundra and, if I’m really lucky, a King penguin colony in Antarctica.

The species involved here is the European starling, Sturnus vulgaris. They’re an invasive species in North America. The species was intentionally released by a group called the American Acclimatization Society

European Starling, Cabin Lake Viewing Blinds, Deschutes National Forest, Near Fort Rock, Oregon. Image retrieved from NaturesPicsOnline.

in Central Park in 1890. Their goal was to bring to the New World all the types
of birds mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. The mention of a starling comes in Henry IV, Part I, when, in Act I, Scene 3, Hotspur proposes: “I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak / Nothing but Mortimer, and give it him, / To keep his anger still in motion.” (Hotspur is correct that starlings can be taught to speak; they’re excellent mimics with a capacity for eerily clear human speech. Weewoo, for example, has been given her own MySpace page.) The group released 60 birds; there are now in North America over 200,000,000, and they’ve reached Alaska. It’s often considered a pest and a bully, but a 2003 paper in Conservation Biology suggests that beliefs on its effect on native species populations may be overblown.*

At any rate, I’m glad they’re here. Even the relatively tiny flocks I see around here are impressive, and it’s always a pleasant surprise when a small group swoop in and hang around in the backyard for a while. They’ll walk briskly and purposefully in a staggered formation through the grass, moving uniformly like spread-out infantry taking over a marshy field in some Vietnam War movie, as they look for insects. They’re too big to get into the bluebird house, so they’re not a problem on that front (unlike the native House sparrows, who use it all summer). And I know a few places on the campus of my university where they can be counted on to roost in the evenings. So it’s fortunate, I suppose, that starling has two syllables and totally fits the meter of that verse.

For further info on starlings in America, see here and here.

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* Koenig, W. D. 2003. European Starlings and their effect on native cavity-nesting birds. Conservation Biology 17: 1134-1140.

Tags: Birds, Saturday Birds