Starlings

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Cleaning House

June 10, 2011 Animal Behavior

Much-maligned but still loved by me, a European Starling makes the drop: grubs for breakfast, in the door; baby droppings out the door. The parent carries the nestlings’ waste out through the portal, drops it in the shrubs nearby, then forages again in the grass for the babies’ next meal of insects. Because Starlings, en [...]

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One More Reason [for Me] to Love Starlings . . .

August 15, 2010 Non-Native Species

. . . because they have artistic sensibilities: Related posts: The Lady Fairer How Starlings Colonized the United States

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The Lady Fairer

May 14, 2010 Non-Native Species

Have you seen her all in gold Like a queen in days of old? She shoots colors all around, Like a sunset going down, Have you seen the lady fairer? I know

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Not-So-Ordinary Black Birds

June 15, 2009 Animal Behavior

Until the esteemed Brewer’s Blackbird Sir Swoops made a name for himself by dive-bombing pedestrians, there’s a good chance he was just one of many birds in black, hopping along the sidewalks of San Francisco without much notice. On first glance, blackbirds and black-colored birds may seem visually ordinary. But closer inspection always renders a [...]

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How Starlings Colonized the United States (and Other Stories)

June 6, 2009 Agriculture

William Shakespeare gets a bad rap for all of the Starlings. The story (or rumor) goes that some Victorian-era Shakespeare fans — misguided to be sure — hatched a plan to colonize, on U.S. soil, every bird species featured in Shakespeare’s plays. According to this Scientific American article a group known as the American Acclimatization [...]

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