(It’s all my mother’s fault.) In addition to being a bit piggish, another reason most Americans don’t love European Starlings is the way the bird looks. starling thing is even starting to confuse me. Although now that I think about it, I’m not totally sure which birds they are actually having trouble with. We sell a lot of these feeders, but most of my customers buy them to keep away the grackles. In fact, many people are forced to use specially made starling-proof suet feeders. In some areas, usually far away from natural food, a flock of starlings will attack a suet feeder like football players going after a fumble. To them, suet is basically invertebrates compressed into a handy cake form. Starlings will eat birdseed, but their favorite feeder item is suet.
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Like college kids, wherever they can find something free to eat, it is home to them.
Robins, and ducks might be out of their comfort zone, but starlings have no comfort zone. Hungry robins are suddenly clinging to birdfeeders and desperate ducks are scrounging for scraps on the ground below. Usually starlings can find plenty to eat on their own, but as we talked about last week, this winter’s super deep freeze has forced many birds out of their comfort zone. Even though starlings are card-carrying omnivores, their food of choice is invertebrates (little buggy and wormy things) and Cape Cod’s salt marshes are heaven for invertebrates, and thus starlings. They would much rather spend their day feeding in the area’s marshes. But unlike grackles, starlings aren’t in love with our yards or our feeders. We might even have more starlings than we have the dreaded grackles. Now you are thinking, “If there are millions of starlings in the country, why aren’t we more familiar with them? Is Cape Cod starling-free?” Oh no, the Cape has a huge population of starlings. (That was my best Shakespeare impersonation.) Or, said another way: Thine censure must beest putteth upon thoust Shakespeare. Too many people dislike starlings already, so I won’t pile on. As you might expect, the introduction of starlings has had a negative impact on our native birds, but I’m not going to get into that right now. In just a few decades their population went from none to millions. Can you imagine?) Regardless of why they are here, Starlings are a very adaptable species and it didn’t take long for them to make themselves at home. (But at least Eugene didn’t want us all to speak like Shakespeare. How did they get here? In the late 1800s, some bonehead by the name of Eugene Schieffelin thought it would be cool for the New World to have all the birds mentioned in the writings of William Shakespeare.
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Then again, I can’t remember how to eat dinner without putting my elbows on the table, so I guess we’re even.)Īs you probably can guess by their name, European Starlings aren’t native birds. Even my own mother couldn’t remember the difference, no matter how many times I told her. I’ve spent years correcting people who call grackles, starlings and vice versa, but it never seems to sink in. (FYI: Starlings and another least favorite bird, the native Common Grackle, are totally different birds. Seeing starlings on a feeder doesn’t sit well with some people because these invasive birds are on just about everybody’s “least favorite” bird list. The vast majority of these unidentified birds are starlings.
So far this winter I’ve received dozens of emails containing photos of “mystery” birds. Yet many people have trouble identifying them. European Starlings are distinctive looking birds, with an estimated North American population of perhaps 200 million individuals. You recognized the new visitors to your feeder. Has there been some kind of explosion in their local population? But lately starlings have taken over my suet feeder. I have been feeding birds in the same yard for over twenty years and have never had any starlings before.
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