Starlings Bring Life
to Backyard
by Mariana Du Brul, Charlotte Conservation Commission,
January 12m 2012, page 19.....

Starlings are sort of background birds; they don’t command a lot of attention because they are so common. However, late this fall and early winter, huge flocks of starlings spent time in our backyard and in the trees and wires at the front of our house, which is near the northern end of Greenbush Road. During a time of year when the richness of summer had been stripped away, there was suddenly a loud swirling sphere of life decorating first the orchard, then the sky. This year the starlings caught my attention, so I decided to learn more about them.
The European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) is not native to North America. It was introduced in the 1890s into Central Park by Shakespeare buffs who wanted to have every bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s works in the United States. All of the starlings in North America are descended from the approximately 200 that were released then, so the genetic diversity of starlings in North America is lower than that in their native Europe. Lack of genetic diversity has not slowed them down here, though. Today they are one of the most numerous songbirds we have. They breed and over-winter in every state in the continental U.S. and most of Canada. Their great success here is probably due to the fact that they exploit a wide range of foods and habitats, and human alteration of the landscape has made their living easy. Depending on what is available, they eat invertebrates, fruits, berries, seeds, even garbage and livestock feeds. Cavity nesters, they readily find nesting habitat in the concrete confines of urban areas. Their preferred method of feeding is to poke around in short grasses with their powerful bills and fish out soil invertebrates. Agricultural-suburban landscapes such as ours provide this foraging ground in abundance.
Starlings are not a benign addition to the fauna of Charlotte. They do nest here and, as non-timid cavity nesters, they aggressively evict native cavity nesters such as wood ducks, northern flickers, great crested flycatchers, eastern bluebirds and tree swallows. There is some evidence that these species have suffered declines because of this.
In spite of the brazen entitlement the starlings exude, I found myself in awe of them this fall. The vociferous cacophony of hundreds and hundreds of them in the trees would suddenly hush, and they would all at once take wing and fill the air with the “shush” of their flight in a great, wheeling horde above. Flocks are always bigger in the fall and winter, so this congregation was nothing unusual. It has been shown that when starlings flock together during feeding, they can each spend less time on predator surveillance than they would have to as individuals. With many eyes alert at once, they can respond to attack more quickly as a flock than as individuals. (Hawks and falcons are common predators.) When starlings forage in a group, sometimes they also use the success (or lack of) of their fellow foragers to judge how long they should spend pecking around, making them more efficient at exploiting a foraging site.
Although some individual starlings migrate, others in the same area stay put. Our summer starling numbers may have decreased here in Charlotte, but I saw a small flock wheeling across a horse pasture on Greenbush Road just today (with high temperatures in the teens), so at least some of these hardy birds are sticking around for the winter.
The starling flocks near my house and around town are tiny compared to those that form in parts of Europe. (See, for example: youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY&feature=related.) In some ways, it is exciting to see such a dynamic and abundant display of wildlife in what is in many ways a depauperate landscape (lacking in a variety of species) compared to the pre-European North America. We’ll never be able to experience the phenomenon of the passenger pigeon, so maybe giant swirling starling flocks could be a consolation prize. Are flocks this huge down the road for us? If so, what will happen to our native cavity nesters and how can we help them? It seems that the Shakespeare fans have had their way: starlings are here to stay.