Thank you for the gift of starlings
The starlings wheel and dive above the canopy of trees in the backyard, their underwings burnished gold by the dying light as they fly overhead.
They never seem at rest, ferrying foodstuffs for their youngsters and feathers for the nest from the time we get up in the morning till even after we turn on the outdoor lights at night.
I admire their energy and marvel at their dedication to their young. Small, stocky birds — more compact than robins and blue jays — their dark, iridescent plumage is sprinkled with flecks of white.
Merriam Webster defines them as, “Any of a family Sturnidae (genus Sturnus) of usually dark gregarious oscine birds especially: a dark brown or in summer glossy greenish-black European bird (S. vulgaris) naturalized nearly worldwide and often considered a pest.”
It’s that last word that dogs the starling.
Many people — my husband included — consider them pests. They don’t hesitate to use manmade structures for their nesting sites, and they’re not above evicting other birds from their hollow tree hidey-holes or painstakingly constructed nests.
They can bring down planes and decimate crops.
“Starlings are estimated to cause at least $800 million in crop damage in the United States every year, devastating everything from cherries to cattle feed…,” says Pacific Standard magazine. “A recent study found 852 instances of airlines striking either starlings or blackbirds were reported to the (Federal Aviation Administration) between 1990 and 2001, causing both danger to passengers and more than a million dollars in damage.”
So, granted, they have a bad rap.
My husband rails against them for the mess they make on what I have begun referring to as the “poop deck,” which they leave splattered with splotches of guano as fast as he can clean it up. He taps on the window to shoo them away when they land on the deck railing, observing us with their quizzical, dark beady eyes.
They are known as one of the Bard’s birds — one of the many avian species mentioned in Shakespeare’s work that drug manufacturer Eugene Schieffelin reportedly tried to introduce to America via New York City in 1890. (The credibility of the link to Shakespeare is in dispute, but the story persists). While some European species did not flourish after their release, Schieffelin’s starlings, brought over from England, took hold with a vengeance, spreading across the U.S. and into Canada.
Aside from their cameo role in Shakespeare (Henry IV, Act 1, Scene 3: “Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak…”), starling is featured in the Jonathan Demme-directed 1991 masterpiece Silence of the Lambs, as the surname of FBI trainee Clarice Starling.
During an interview with Starling, psychopathic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter utters the chilling phrase: “You fly back to school now, little Starling. Fly, fly, fly. Fly, fly, fly.”
And so all the starlings in our backyard have become “Clarices.” Every year they come back to nest in the eave of our shed, filling the air with their shrill whistles and chattering calls, sometimes sounding like fireworks being launched or safety flares being deployed.
They are incredible mimics — the Rich Little of birds, able to impersonate hawks, jays, northern flickers and others — a talent that must come in handy when trying to keep other birds clear of their territory.
But it’s their acrobatics I admire most, their ability to fly in flocks, called murmurations, shape-shifting formations, a choreographed spectacle in the sky.
As for Eugene Schieffelin, there is little chance now of undoing the proliferation of starlings he unleashed.
He died in Rhode Island in 1906, age 79, and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, Lot 290, Section 10. It’s a national historic landmark — 478 acres of rolling hills, valleys and ponds, home to 185 bird species.
Including starlings.