Unlike the unfortunate passengers on that aircraft, my husband and I owe our lives to a starling. Long years ago I found a nest in a cinderblock wall, with one baby starling on the ground. I took it home and raised it in our travel trailer (we were poor military folks). A year later we moved when we got out, and placed the travel trailer on a rented piece of land. So far so good. The starling was good at imitating our dog barking, and our irritated shouts at the dog to shut up. The starling even got along with our cat (bird was caged when not supervised, of course). One morning when husband and I were out of sorts and had felt ill for a couple of days, he went outside for a smoke and I dizzily got up and was about to wander outside when I looked in the cage to not see the bird. I went to see and to my horror, the starling was on the bottom of the cage, barely moving. I grabbed it up and ran to show husband. He saw it take a couple of struggling breaths and then die. We looked at each other and I said, "Canary in a coal mine!" He ran to the propane tanks and shut them off. Yes, one of the exhaust lines from the heater was leaking Carbon Monoxide into the trailer. If it weren't for that starling.... To this day I tolerate starlings even though they're an invasive species.
I was inside a murmuration. I was driving on a two lane farm road, going 55, watching the huge flock air dance up ahead over a field to the right. As I approached, it flowed around me and over the road. I was momentarily disoriented, seeing hundreds of individual birds stream past my windows. For that brief second, I felt like I was flying with them! Every time I drive by that spot my brain 'feels' the exhilaration all over again. Like cresting a hill on a roller coaster, that pit of your stomach "Weeee!" feeling and all.
I was afraid you were you going to describe a car accident in which you went airborne somehow & thus ended up within the murmuration! lol. Glad I was wrong.
My mom used to pay me 50 cents per starling back in the 90's. They devastated her garden year after year until I got a BB gun and then she told me to get rid of as many as I could. Between myself and the stray farm cats around the area, we put such a dent in the local starling population that it still hasn't recovered fully. And my mom enjoys her songbirds.
@@jonstapleton2340we were allowed to take starlings and sparrows, along with doves, squirrels, rabbits and quail (only during their respective seasons though.) We weren't offered any money though, just allowed to hunt with air guns.
You have to be up early, as the entire flock will show up just before dawn/first light. I even wired up mouse traps to ears of 24 corn plants which didn't trip from the wind for about 2 wks. During that time not a single starling, afterwords they showed right back up. Maybe net traps? Clamshell style. It's legally always open season on starlings being invasive.
Equally invasive in North America is the House Sparrow. They are native to Eurasia, northern Africa, and most of Europe, but were intentionally released in Brooklyn, New York in 1851 as a way to control linden moth populations. The Cincinnati Acclimatization Society also introduced house sparrows between 1872 and 1874. Today, house sparrows are considered an invasive species and are widespread and abundant throughout North America. They will kill nesting birds and their chicks then build their own nest atop the dead. Both the Starling and House Sparrow have contributed to the decline in native Eastern Bluebird populations
We have American gray/grey squirrels here in the UK that have almost completely wiped out our native red squirrels after being introduced a century or so ago so it cuts both ways…..
@@djs98blue The native red squirrels in the UK were already nearly wiped out by the 19th century, having been hated as pests and over-hunted for centuries, whereas the grey squirrel was imported into Victorian England as a novelty. Early press reports noted then that grey squirrels were more sociable than reds, and not until decades later (after reds disappeared and greys became numerous) did British public opinion invert to start loving reds and hating greys. Virtually all red squirrels now resident in the UK (mostly in Scotland) are descended from red squirrel populations artificially reintroduced from Scandinavia no earlier than the 20th century (after greys were already established in Britain). The grey squirrel is social whereas the red squirrel is territorial, which makes the grey naturally better adapted to live more densely populated areas-like most of modern England. The Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) is still abundant and even hunted for its furs in the sparsely populated habitats for which it is adapted, e.g. in forests all across the vast Eurasian landmass. The campaigns to “save the red squirrel” in Britain are not conservationism but rather foolhardy selfish attempts to force red squirrels to live short unpleasant lives in inhospitable habitats-packed on a densely inhabited island just for the amusement of humans.
Hey, I gotta stick up for Steve. He's the one local grackle that hangs out with my cardinals and mourning doves. Steve is chill. He doesn't act like his distant relatives when they come to visit twice a year. He even gets along with the local bunny population! So they aren't all a-holes. Now blue jays...
I've never had a problem with grackles. They usually only show up one or two at a time, they don't hog the feeders and they generally get along with the other birds.
Grackles have the good looks to make up for their faults, unlike starlings. Blue jays can f*** right off along with cat birds. 2 of the most irritating birds to listen to.
After I moved out to get married, a Blue Jay adopted my parents and hung out under their front porch awing for about a year (I think he nested in the tree nearby). He seemed to enjoy being out of the rain, the sun, high winds, and pretty much whatever else you’d encounter living in a tree. He wasn’t annoying, at least not intentionally. My dad did have to put up a “drip pan” of sorts so the front steps weren’t covered in droppings.
I don't know, I came back with some cool bird photos from Mexico, and one of the least cool photos was a grackle. A friend of mine saw the picture and said "those are the birds that stalked my husband and I when we were there!"😅
I love grackles, at work my sister and I keep an eye out for Craig. He is a grackle that dives into the trash cans, but only for french fries. Once I even saw one walk inside the cafe and grab a fry off the ground and flee.
A starling flew down the vent flue pipe for my furnace a few years ago and got into the combustion box and managed to shut off all the pilot lights with its flapping, turning off my heat. I was pretty surprised to find him in there, alive and well, but not as surprised as he was to find me, and it took nearly an hour and a lot of open windows and running with sheets to get the thing out of my basement / stairwell.
I had no idea starlings were so notorious in the US. Where I live in Europe they're well-loved and people actively build bird-houses to entice them to populate our gardens and praise them for their songs and mimicry. Had no idea they were basically considered prettier seagulls 😅
Likewise; I was fascinated by the ones that nested in our chimney pots as a kid! Their mimicry skills and murmuration patterns are brilliant 🤩 although it was less fun each time one fell down the chimney into our bedrooms 😅 ... But over the years their numbers have dwindled, to the point that I've only seen a couple of them recently (30years later). I had no idea about the stabbing other birds thing, as we've always had sparrows, blackbirds, jackdaws, finches, bluetits, wagtails - and then some - as well as them in our garden. (Near London)
They destroy most native bird populations when they arrive. Songbirds in particular, but we very rarely see Robins anymore and they were commonplace growing up it the 60's and 70's. Bluejays are still prety common. Portland, OR. area.
No way. European Starlings were artificially introduced and now terribly invasive. They are extremely annoying and bullies, taking over native songbirds' territory and food. I wish ALL of them would go back to Europe!
I remember my dad telling me once about an 'infestation' (his word) of starlings at his parents' home in rural Illinois in the early 50s. He'd just returned from Korea and was having none of it. He decided perhaps a loud noise would startle the starlings and encourage them to relocate from the five oak trees out front, so he took a shotgun, loaded it with scatter shot, and fired it up into the trees. He killed 25, and the murmuration relocated as he wanted. Things you can't get away with now lol.
I live in a semi-rural area. Most bird watching types around here use starlings as target practice for high powered bb guns. There's a special kind of sadness when someone says they're giving up on their bird feeders because the starlings have run everything else off. I watched a starling peck at a squirrel trying to get into my feeder once. They're absolute psychos
No, in rural areas you can still shoot at invasive species like starlings and house sparrows. In fact, conservationists would line up for miles for an opportunity to have a whack at bringing 'em down. Heck, they would supply their own eco-friendly shells. My grandfather told me starlings were good eating -- tender and juicy -- and the burgeoning population of starlings dropped significantly during the Depression and WWII, only to recover rapidly when the population shifted to suburban and urban areas.
Earlier in the week I thought I saw a Starling chasing away another bird...turns out it was a mother annoyed at its juvenile. To my surprise, she later fed it worms. It did not have the beautiful colors and looked brown. They do entertain me during the summer even though they have annoying habits such as keeping the motion lights strobing on windy nights by flying into the yard to eat worms. When the lights go off they fly back which makes the light activate. This can go on for hours!
It's funny that this video came out, because very recently I've been watching a bunch of falconry videos where guys are specifically trying to control the starling population with kestrels!
Here in my area of Virginia, starlings basically are flying rats. They're everywhere, they're intrusive and aggressive to other birds, and when a flock comes through, they empty my backyard bird feeders faster than a Max Verstappen lap time. One positive thing I have learned is that they're not fans of safflower bird seed; they'll eat it if they must, so they won't starve, but it's not their first choice, so that helps reduce the feeder raiding a bit.
They eat wasps. Every time wasps start a next on my house the starlings come, tear the nest apart, an eat the wasps as they come out. They are one of only four birds that will devour murder hornets.
@@nortyfiner I guess you get what you get and you don't get upset. Another name for pigeon is rock dove which lived on cliffs. Cities are full of man-made cliffs. Plus it's easier to find food.
Here in central Illinois the starlings will show up in droves in the spring. The WOOSHING sound when they decide to leave all at once is such a surreal thing to experience & take in.
Starlings are curious creatures. We have a whole flock of them here that like to perch on top of buildings and people-watch. They seem to be show-offs, because they'll produce a whole myriad of sounds and calls. They are indeed curious creatures.
Well, as bad as starlings are, at least they're not swallows. They've been known to carry coconuts when they migrate. A decade or so ago, I was in San Antonio having lunch at a Taco Cabana. one of my work mates forgot his flatware, and set down his burrito to get some, a grackle flew in out of nowhere, and snatched up his burrito off the table and made off with it. Here in Texas, they're generally a menace all around.
I swear at Stanford in the 1980’s the blackbirds learned to poop on your head if you ate outside. Then if you left your food unguarded to go wash the poop off, you’d find a flock of blackbirds shredding your food when you got back.
Anyone with a bird feeder curses Schieffelin’s name every time a flock of The Common European Starlings of the United States of North America cleans out a freshly hung feeder.
I was recently at a family function and my grandma was talking about your channel. I was surprised as I don’t think our TH-cam subscriptions overlap much but we both love your channel without ever talking about it previously. So hi Granmomie if you see this! Love you! ❤😂
In KY we had a major starling issue. But here in FL I have bluebirds every day... Our closest thing to a starling is a redwing blackbird. I remember when the starling were so numerous over the railroad yards in my home town in KY, there were massive piles of guano and noise, and ruining the trees and covering the railroad cars with guano. The fire department came out and sprayed all the grove of trees where thousand of them were inhabiting.. They sprayed them with soapy water, which cooled them down, whereupon they fell to the ground and mostly died...The clean up was a massive mess too.
Here in southern idaho in agricultural areas and they literally blotted out the sky and destroyed crops. The farmers were authorized to kill, bludgeon,poison, club, and ram with farm trucks as many starlings as possible. Happily, the body count for 1 time, one day scratch at least 10 thousand of those rotten nasty things ..
@@lauralake7430 SorryThose starlings at that time were a plauge on thefarms and population. The commercial farmers did highly targeted poisoning because it was necessary, and well within the bounds of the law. On occasion we have had a murder of crows infest in great number in farmland but also the huge flocks infested complete downtown and shopping/ business areas. What did they do?? The city council , mayor, fish and game and police all tried lesser measures but . those were not even close to adequate. Solution,?????????? the major, city council, voted , and the mayor signed and authorized the police chief and the police force walked the streets with 12 gauge shotguns loaded with birdshot, everywhere, including downtown shopping areas, blasting the crows out of the air. Of course, by shooting at flying birse up in the air the birdshot loses momentum after 40 yards or so, and then falls like the gentle rain from heaven. It was noisy, and odd seeing cops blasting airborne crows in the city, but Americans' usually do not get very alarmed at gunfire, even the shopping districts. Hundreds of crows were eliminated out of necessity. Not a problem at all.
@@Bob_Adkins You can eat the birds as well. My dad (and his grandmother), survived Christmas of 1944 by him snaring starlings. Food was rationed. Each person was allowed half a pound of beef mince for Christmas dinner. Only the butcher was sold out... Dad returned home with eight brace of birds, wich were spit roasted, as they had no fat to fry them in a pan... Along with a few potatoes, that was a two day dinner. Love from Norway ❤
We used to live by the local airport. When we first moved to the neighborhood we were horrified by loud booms occasionally. Come to find out, if there were birds on the tarmac, the birds would be frightened away long enough for planes to land or take off.
Yeah birds being sucked into jet engines is a disaster. You ever see the video of the chicken carcass being tossed into that huge engine and making it basically blow up? Yikes! 😱
Love your post's Laurence. How you do that, without breaking up laughing, is beyond me. Oh, and the American accent part you did describing starlings? Hilarious!
When I was a kid, my family would visit extended family in WV, who owned a beautiful 500 acre farm. I "adopted" the elderly couple who owned all this paradise, calling them Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma has large fruit trees growing near the farmhouse, full of fresh, sweet, delicious plums which she used to make mouth watering jam and preserves. The starlings loved the plums. My dad was an expert marksman on the US Army Rifle Team. His home is filled with first place medals he won. My dad didn't miss. Grandma always welcomed Dad like a long lost son because he would sit in a rocking chair on the porch and pick off starlings one by one on that big, lovely plum tree as she scooted around the kitchen, happy as a clam, knowing her precious plums would now be safe from the marauding starlings. We would return home with a quart jar of freshly canned damson preserves. 😋
I've got one too, his name's Lenny. He's not a talker, though, I've raised others many years ago who talked but he's more of a grumbler but does imitate other noises (lots of kissing, tisking, that horse clicking noise, a bit of whistling, etc). But if I do a stretch and say "stretchy" he'll do the typical bird stretch routine, and if I imitate the bird "butt in the air with head down and legs straightened out" stretch (you'll know the one I mean), he'll do that, which is pretty cute. They're such characters, aren't they?
In my childhood, my next door neighbor had a relative who would visit, bringing his shotgun. He would piss off every dog in the neighborhood, shooting starlings. Boy he really hated them. We were once almost rural, then progress changed us to absolute suburbia. That’s when the city asked him to stop that.
We have the a-hole birds at the farm where I work. They try to nest under the LP tank covers, and we have to get the nests out. They're usually covered in mites too. In the fall when they flock up it's like being in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. 🙁
These Ahole birds come to Florida in the winter. Where I once worked, they would roost in the trees on our parking lot. It was like being personally in the movie The Birds. I was always waiting for them to peck my eyes out, as they would chirp in the trees & then all take flight at once! Frightening!
They are aggressive and are known to swoop, but are cowards. So large movements, loud souds and throwing things is enough to deter them from coming at you.
It’s worth mentioning that starlings often destroy vent covers and build their nests in the vents causing damage to a property. Nest removal replacing vent pipe and replacing all the vents with metal ones has cost me $700 😢
US resident here. European Starlings are everywhere where I live, and I live in a very rural area. I've been tempted to do my local ecosystem a favor and hunt some to make a meat pie, but I don't think they'd taste very good.
The way they feed is funny too. They spend about as much time watching to see if another one of them got something, then they all run and push him out of the way to try and steal whatever he found.
Ah yes, damn starlings. Had them nesting in the peak of the roof in my previous house where the parents would dispose of their baby waste in my pool. In my new to me house they tried to nest in the bathroom vent exhaust. Needed to buy a cover and get up on a ladder to properly evict them. 🙄
Found you by accident but I love the content you provide. As a teacher you will know kids can’t be arsed learning but through comedy (like you do) in to subjects it more palatable and engaging to a point you don’t realise your learning because it’s fun (a bit like the show QI)
They're canny, too. Always nested in the eaves of our farmhouse, spot my dad "meant to fix". Mom encouraged us removing them. They figured out quickly enough when had a BB gun and our effective range. They wouldn't twitch from where they were sitting on a wire six feet above us if we weren't carrying, but would fly when we were 25 yards away if we had one.
I love many things English; Currently Yorkshire Tea holds a favored spot, but Starlings on the other hand; well, I don't recommend poison, but for the Starling I think an exception can be made.
I knew nothing about starlings until we moved into our new house 4.5 years ago. There's a copse of trees behind our new house, and I noticed on moving day that the trees were filled with (I'm guessing) 300-500+ small black birds. (It was March; the trees had no leaves, so we could see all the birds.) I had never seen that kind of mass-congregation of birds ever in my life, and haven't since, either. Only on moving day. It was like a trailer for a Hitchcock movie was happening in my back yard.
Years ago we'd hear loud booms coming from Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana. I don't know what they used to create the noise, but I did learn they were trying to scare away Starlings.
I almost didn't watch this episode. I have a major bird phobia because of this creature. In my teens, we lived in a super creepy old house, and these things got into the attic, and then my bedroom. Have you been awoken at 3 am by a screaming, panicked, flapping bird flying into the bedposts and the window of your room? No?? Then I envy you! This happened multiple times over those years. My dad preferred to let our cat deal with it. So I would huddle, shaking, on our couch, under a covering blanket, waiting for the noise to stop, and for our cat to trot down the stairs. The twitching creature hanging from his mouth, beak and wings flopped backwards and bouncing with his steps. I shudder and twitch just thinking about it. This happened in the 80s. My brothers' worst threat was that he would leave a dead bird in my bed. I still duck when anything flies near me. The sounds of wings flapping makes me panic. Dead birds affect me just as deeply. I live in constant fear of finding a bird in my house. I avoid stores that attract birds, like Lowe's. I don't remember even noticing birds before they started showing up in our house. I would also look up at night to find bats flying in my room. Those are awful because they can be silent all day, just lurking, and spring out of nowhere after dark. Plus, the rabies. We kept dad's fishing net upstairs to deal with these issues. Okay, I can't continue. Good video, but absolute nightmare fuel!
Starlings are indeed quite transfixing. I've lost focus while driving more than once due to the mesmerizing wave-like shimmer of a large flock of them suddenly changing direction. Almost every year, I'll see them around harvest time above vineyards.
Where I lived in the Midwest, starlings were always a problem in the late summer. The city actually had air cannons that residents could reserve to blast into the sky at dusk to startle the starlings and get them to fly off. I just relied on banging pots and pans outside when they were trying to roost for the evening. Their poop ends up everywhere and is acidic so it can damage painted surfaces. But I do miss the beauty of a murmuration.
My mom and I always called starlings crazy birds. We didn’t really encounter them until we moved to Chester County Pennsylvania in the mid 1970s. They weren’t in Fairfield County Connecticut at least not in the HUGE numbers that they were in Pennsylvania. I haven’t seen that many in Southeast Michigan either. 🙂🐈🐈⬛💖🌈
Starlings were a major health hazard here back in the late 1960s and early '70s. There were so many birds roosting in nearby woods and copses and in trees all over the town, turning the ground white with their guano. Hystoplasmosis was a real danger to human health because of it, so it was pretty common for firetrucks to go to various neighborhoods and run their sirens for a couple hours to get rid of the birds. They did eventually leave but it took a few years.
I worked at a private golf club which is also a property protected by the Audubon Society, and while there weren’t very many starlings on the open property, we had them under the Carriage House, which was built in 1895. I had to walk under there to approach my vehicle. They built their nest under the ceiling of the open car drive. They’d attack me at first, but I started walking on the other side, slowly, in view. They never went after me again. All of nature has negatives, but they have their good points. I loved them a lot. They were always sweet. And built really cool nests.
@@donnabert Maybe where you live. I have seen, many times, the results of mega-flocks taking over an area of woods. Oh, and then there are bird counts.
I had read that the goal was to introduce to America "All the birds found in the Bible." While looking through the hunting seasons in my State it said that invasive Starlings & Sparrows are always "In Season".
They are directly killing off native species, and that will eventually have dire consequences. There is little else we can do but slow the growth of their population and bolster the native ones long enough for either a solution or the collapse of an ecosystem.
I enjoy watching them fly in their huge numbers, they make some wild shapes. What i don't like is when there are about a 100 or so in my neighbor's tree at 5:00AM singing as loud as they can....like waking up to static...
Starlings had one redeeming feature where I grew up in New York. They were known to eat at least two invasive species. They poke holes in the lawn to spear the grubs of Japanese beetles and have supposedly found a way to squeeze out the innards of the spiny caterpillars of gypsy moths.
Sitting in my hotel room adjacent Hyde Park ,Baywater( Queensway Tube station) and watching this latest episode. Experiencing daily life in the UK adds an entirely new perspective to YOU and your videos. I will never be the same.
Starlings migrate through my area of the southwestern Great Plains in the summers but the real invader of recent times is the Eurasian collared dove. Every small town now has thousands of those noisy pests. There is a year-long hunting season on them with no bag limits but few are shot because they mostly stay in town and around farms. I recently counted thirty-two of them in my back yard alone. European house sparrows and pigeons are another two introduced bird pests that occur here. One bird introduction, however, has proved beneficial, and that is the ring-necked pheasant. On the fish side, brown trout are another beneficial introduction, Common carp and the several species of Asian carp, not so much.
Grackles are the sweetest, funniest birds And can talk and are easily trainable. I had one that would bowl for peas. Adorable. ( they're not federally protected)
Retribution for the introduction of grey squirrels to the UK nearly wiping out native reds? I was surprised to see starlings (and sparrows) on my recent trip to Canada and this video explains it.
In 1972 I showed up at Texas A&M in Bryan / College Station; the campus was over-run with these bastards. I lived near the Gulf coast and had never heard of them. Now, they are in Galveston on the coast. We have lost all of our robins, mockingbirds, and every other species.
The starling is a really cool bird to watch when they migrate, the line of starlings that goes for literal days across the sky for as far as you can see but out side of that they are the worst pest. They build nest in gutters downspouts and if they can get in an attic find another way in to a building they build nest in walls. I have spent more time fixing damage done by them than any other pest.
I noticed that since starlings arrived in my area, woodpeckers, jays, and other birds are now hardly seen, specifically the woodpeckers; those are just gone... haven't seen them for about five years. 😢
The subscribe button flashed when you said "subscribe now." I just checked your channel out under the assumption you do all wildlife videos. Bit of a shock, but subscribing anyways! P. S. I think you'd be a really great nature video narrator.
Every autumn we would have tens of thousands of the things land in the trees and yards of our neighborhood when i was a youngster. They were the only critter my parents allowed me to go after with my pellet rifle. My buddies and I would set up blinds on our front porches to ambush the feathered pests. They made such a racket, we could get off multiple shots before they spooked but they would only fly around for a little while before settling back down on all the lawns in the neighborhood. Eventually the birds would move on to terrorize some other neighborhood a few streets away. We would have to pick up what we dispatched and dispose of them deep in the woods behind our houses. We would notice an increase in the population of stray cats in our vicinity over the following week. Guess we made them happy for a while.
In the Pittsburgh area the only wildlife the Steel Valley had was English Sparrows, Pigeons ( all gray) starlings and the occasional ‘possum. Wildlife didn’t fare well in the eastern ‘burbs until the steel mills died.
I live in KCMO area and Starlings have been common around here as long as I can remember. However ,when I saw about 6 of them in my yard a few weeks ago it was the first time in years that I've seen any. It seems like the population of all species of birds in this area has drastically decreased.
🔥Starlings Dangerous Hording Obsession 🔥Every year Starlings "build" ( frantically fill a space with a cartoonishly large stockpile of dry grass / hay) a huge number of nests inside almost every nook & cranny of the vehicles in our parking lot. Even atop the tires , engine areas etc. One woman's car caught fire 🔥Then they will target gas grills, awnings & more. One farmer told me they ruined thousands of dollars worth of equipment . It's like roulette , who's car they pick each year, It's nuts . They are also one of the messiest song birds when it comes to excitement where they live .
Starlings have an amazing ability for mimicry and are very intelligent. They make pretty good pet birds. Since they're invasive, bird rehabilitation centers can't release them back into the wild when people bring them in injured or in abandoned nests and many rehab places will often (laws permitting, I guess) adopt them out to people as pets as they're so common (especially in spring). They bond with owners. So, if you're interested in keeping a bird and have the resources to have one, they're worth looking into and contacting your local bird and waterfowl rehabilitation centers about their starling adoption policy as they otherwise need to be placed in wildlife sanctuaries, where there will always be limited space.
The one good thing about Starlings is that they love grubs! In fact they line up in a row and march across my yard pecking away eating one grub after another. Unfortunately they also love eating grain and in the winter they congregate down south around cattle pens eating more grain then the cattle.
I truly enjoy the Starling couple that live above and visit my yard. To watch the babies poke their heads out the hole that was drilled by the local woodpecker was fun. Without Starlings our nature sounds would be dulled. Starlings can vocalise and that's the most amazing things about them plus they are cute when they hit the birdbath.
A bit of starling trivia: like parrots, they can be taught to talk. As an aside, myna birds, which are famous for being good talkers, are species of starling.
I know all about their faults, but to be caught up inside a mummeration is truly awesome. To stand with arms out while thousands of feathers, and even fragile bodies, brush all over is a one of a kind experience that I have no words for. We all have our faults, and I'll speak no ill of these tiny warriors.
I agree. We have one that nests nearby and his “song” consists of all kinds of bird imitations, a siren, an engine, and other mechanical sounds. I love watching the parents tend to their young after they have fledged. When the young one gets too pushy, mom or dad puts them in their place!
In my area, Starlings often aggregate in large groups of 100 or more. It's quite impressive to see so many in one spot, and it really causes us to appreciate their finer qualities... until we go outside and realize that our entire house and everything around it is covered in bird poo 🫤
There is a song that goes "I wish I was sn English bird. I wouylf sit up on the steeple and s*it fown on all the people." I have slso felt that this anonymous bird was a starling. Also my grandmother HATED grackles. She said they were awful birds but never explained why. Now Lawrence has also made disparaging words without explanation. Why does everybody hate grackles?
Just intelligent enough to get into trouble, too stupid to fathom the consequences. They are also notorious feeder bullies in quite a few places. Grackles are mean but not quite as malicious as the starlings. To starlings infanticide and nest takeovers are routine to them. To the point they would rather steal than find their own, even if another family is living there already... They are putting several species in severe decline where I live due to their habits.
You forgot a few important points: they are extremely intelligent, therefore resilient and extremely adaptable. Also they can talk & mimic anything. Lastly, they make awesome pets! I found a nestling about two days old on the ground; no nest in sight. My ususal wildlife rehabber had severe COVID. I sent him a picture, per his request, and he guided me through raising the little bird. Fast forward two+ years later, and Munson is the light of my life. A single starling isn't releasable, i dont even think he knows he's a bird.
Lawrence have you ever considered talking about turkeys as a video topic. Its both a commonly seen somewhat large animal that has quite a bit of cultural significance in america. Just thpught it would be a good idea.
The ones here, near the West Coast seem to superficially resemble robins. They have orange chests, but are smaller. They have huge flocks, thousands if not millions of birds. They tend to resemble schools of fish when flying through the air, and a flock can take hours to pass overhead. These may be different birds, but we refer to them as "starlings".
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love your name for the birds.🤣🤣
Unlike the unfortunate passengers on that aircraft, my husband and I owe our lives to a starling.
Long years ago I found a nest in a cinderblock wall, with one baby starling on the ground. I took it home and raised it in our travel trailer (we were poor military folks). A year later we moved when we got out, and placed the travel trailer on a rented piece of land. So far so good. The starling was good at imitating our dog barking, and our irritated shouts at the dog to shut up. The starling even got along with our cat (bird was caged when not supervised, of course).
One morning when husband and I were out of sorts and had felt ill for a couple of days, he went outside for a smoke and I dizzily got up and was about to wander outside when I looked in the cage to not see the bird. I went to see and to my horror, the starling was on the bottom of the cage, barely moving. I grabbed it up and ran to show husband. He saw it take a couple of struggling breaths and then die. We looked at each other and I said, "Canary in a coal mine!" He ran to the propane tanks and shut them off. Yes, one of the exhaust lines from the heater was leaking Carbon Monoxide into the trailer. If it weren't for that starling....
To this day I tolerate starlings even though they're an invasive species.
Sorry for the loss of your friend.
Fantastic story!!❤❤
I'm glad y'all made the connection. Many people might not.
Not a strong argument for keeping them alive when one saved you by dying.
What happened to the doggo?
I was inside a murmuration.
I was driving on a two lane farm road, going 55, watching the huge flock air dance up ahead over a field to the right.
As I approached, it flowed around me and over the road.
I was momentarily disoriented, seeing hundreds of individual birds stream past my windows.
For that brief second, I felt like I was flying with them!
Every time I drive by that spot my brain 'feels' the exhilaration all over again. Like cresting a hill on a roller coaster, that pit of your stomach "Weeee!" feeling and all.
that is awesome
I was afraid you were you going to describe a car accident in which you went airborne somehow & thus ended up within the murmuration! lol. Glad I was wrong.
My mom used to pay me 50 cents per starling back in the 90's. They devastated her garden year after year until I got a BB gun and then she told me to get rid of as many as I could. Between myself and the stray farm cats around the area, we put such a dent in the local starling population that it still hasn't recovered fully. And my mom enjoys her songbirds.
I hope the cats don't attack songbirds!
I think my friend used to get a dollar from his dad in the late 90s. He gave us a 20 gauge. his rules were Starlings only.
@@jonstapleton2340we were allowed to take starlings and sparrows, along with doves, squirrels, rabbits and quail (only during their respective seasons though.) We weren't offered any money though, just allowed to hunt with air guns.
You have to be up early, as the entire flock will show up just before dawn/first light.
I even wired up mouse traps to ears of 24 corn plants which didn't trip from the wind for about 2 wks. During that time not a single starling, afterwords they showed right back up.
Maybe net traps? Clamshell style. It's legally always open season on starlings being invasive.
You were a bird hitman 😂 💰
Equally invasive in North America is the House Sparrow. They are native to Eurasia, northern Africa, and most of Europe, but were intentionally released in Brooklyn, New York in 1851 as a way to control linden moth populations. The Cincinnati Acclimatization Society also introduced house sparrows between 1872 and 1874. Today, house sparrows are considered an invasive species and are widespread and abundant throughout North America. They will kill nesting birds and their chicks then build their own nest atop the dead. Both the Starling and House Sparrow have contributed to the decline in native Eastern Bluebird populations
We have American gray/grey squirrels here in the UK that have almost completely wiped out our native red squirrels after being introduced a century or so ago so it cuts both ways…..
Also invasive is the horse, dog, cat and honey bee. Swallow that.
@@donnabert Horses are originally native to North America and the reintroduced horses aren't as destructive as other invasive animals.
@@slipstreamxr3763 That is horseshit and you know it.
@@djs98blue The native red squirrels in the UK were already nearly wiped out by the 19th century, having been hated as pests and over-hunted for centuries, whereas the grey squirrel was imported into Victorian England as a novelty. Early press reports noted then that grey squirrels were more sociable than reds, and not until decades later (after reds disappeared and greys became numerous) did British public opinion invert to start loving reds and hating greys.
Virtually all red squirrels now resident in the UK (mostly in Scotland) are descended from red squirrel populations artificially reintroduced from Scandinavia no earlier than the 20th century (after greys were already established in Britain). The grey squirrel is social whereas the red squirrel is territorial, which makes the grey naturally better adapted to live more densely populated areas-like most of modern England.
The Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) is still abundant and even hunted for its furs in the sparsely populated habitats for which it is adapted, e.g. in forests all across the vast Eurasian landmass.
The campaigns to “save the red squirrel” in Britain are not conservationism but rather foolhardy selfish attempts to force red squirrels to live short unpleasant lives in inhospitable habitats-packed on a densely inhabited island just for the amusement of humans.
Hey, I gotta stick up for Steve. He's the one local grackle that hangs out with my cardinals and mourning doves. Steve is chill. He doesn't act like his distant relatives when they come to visit twice a year. He even gets along with the local bunny population! So they aren't all a-holes. Now blue jays...
I've never had a problem with grackles. They usually only show up one or two at a time, they don't hog the feeders and they generally get along with the other birds.
Grackles have the good looks to make up for their faults, unlike starlings. Blue jays can f*** right off along with cat birds. 2 of the most irritating birds to listen to.
After I moved out to get married, a Blue Jay adopted my parents and hung out under their front porch awing for about a year (I think he nested in the tree nearby). He seemed to enjoy being out of the rain, the sun, high winds, and pretty much whatever else you’d encounter living in a tree. He wasn’t annoying, at least not intentionally. My dad did have to put up a “drip pan” of sorts so the front steps weren’t covered in droppings.
I don't know, I came back with some cool bird photos from Mexico, and one of the least cool photos was a grackle. A friend of mine saw the picture and said "those are the birds that stalked my husband and I when we were there!"😅
I love grackles, at work my sister and I keep an eye out for Craig. He is a grackle that dives into the trash cans, but only for french fries. Once I even saw one walk inside the cafe and grab a fry off the ground and flee.
A starling flew down the vent flue pipe for my furnace a few years ago and got into the combustion box and managed to shut off all the pilot lights with its flapping, turning off my heat. I was pretty surprised to find him in there, alive and well, but not as surprised as he was to find me, and it took nearly an hour and a lot of open windows and running with sheets to get the thing out of my basement / stairwell.
I had no idea starlings were so notorious in the US. Where I live in Europe they're well-loved and people actively build bird-houses to entice them to populate our gardens and praise them for their songs and mimicry. Had no idea they were basically considered prettier seagulls 😅
Likewise; I was fascinated by the ones that nested in our chimney pots as a kid! Their mimicry skills and murmuration patterns are brilliant 🤩 although it was less fun each time one fell down the chimney into our bedrooms 😅 ... But over the years their numbers have dwindled, to the point that I've only seen a couple of them recently (30years later).
I had no idea about the stabbing other birds thing, as we've always had sparrows, blackbirds, jackdaws, finches, bluetits, wagtails - and then some - as well as them in our garden. (Near London)
I have a 1936 Peterson’s guide. Their range at that time was limited to east of the Rockies.
They destroy most native bird populations when they arrive. Songbirds in particular, but we very rarely see Robins anymore and they were commonplace growing up it the 60's and 70's. Bluejays are still prety common. Portland, OR. area.
I hereby petition that the name of the European Starling be officially changed to the Common European Starling of the United States of North America.
I second.
Here here!
Aw yes, the Cesusna
No way. European Starlings were artificially introduced and now terribly invasive. They are extremely annoying and bullies, taking over native songbirds' territory and food. I wish ALL of them would go back to Europe!
... Lawrence is NOT like a starling! Instead a delight!
I remember my dad telling me once about an 'infestation' (his word) of starlings at his parents' home in rural Illinois in the early 50s. He'd just returned from Korea and was having none of it. He decided perhaps a loud noise would startle the starlings and encourage them to relocate from the five oak trees out front, so he took a shotgun, loaded it with scatter shot, and fired it up into the trees. He killed 25, and the murmuration relocated as he wanted. Things you can't get away with now lol.
I live in a semi-rural area. Most bird watching types around here use starlings as target practice for high powered bb guns. There's a special kind of sadness when someone says they're giving up on their bird feeders because the starlings have run everything else off. I watched a starling peck at a squirrel trying to get into my feeder once. They're absolute psychos
My aunt and uncle in Minnesota used to pick off Starlings with a BB gun years ago.
You can get away with it if they're starlings. They aren't protected by law in the US.
@@Cillana Most states actually encourage you to kill them if you have the opportunity. As Lawrence mentioned, they kill native birds.
No, in rural areas you can still shoot at invasive species like starlings and house sparrows. In fact, conservationists would line up for miles for an opportunity to have a whack at bringing 'em down. Heck, they would supply their own eco-friendly shells. My grandfather told me starlings were good eating -- tender and juicy -- and the burgeoning population of starlings dropped significantly during the Depression and WWII, only to recover rapidly when the population shifted to suburban and urban areas.
Earlier in the week I thought I saw a Starling chasing away another bird...turns out it was a mother annoyed at its juvenile. To my surprise, she later fed it worms. It did not have the beautiful colors and looked brown. They do entertain me during the summer even though they have annoying habits such as keeping the motion lights strobing on windy nights by flying into the yard to eat worms. When the lights go off they fly back which makes the light activate. This can go on for hours!
I think they are doing it on purpose. They are quite intelligent.
Their plumage gets glossier and more iridescent during breeding season, so it would make sense that the juvenile was still brown.
It's funny that this video came out, because very recently I've been watching a bunch of falconry videos where guys are specifically trying to control the starling population with kestrels!
Waiting for lil dolph to get his reps in .... wish I could remember the Chanel, I think its called Jonesfalconry but I could be wrong
@@alanomofo That's right! @jonesfalconry
I also immediately thought of Jones Falconry when I saw the title.
I've seen a guy doing drive by birdings with his kestrel 😂
It's pretty cool!
Here in my area of Virginia, starlings basically are flying rats. They're everywhere, they're intrusive and aggressive to other birds, and when a flock comes through, they empty my backyard bird feeders faster than a Max Verstappen lap time. One positive thing I have learned is that they're not fans of safflower bird seed; they'll eat it if they must, so they won't starve, but it's not their first choice, so that helps reduce the feeder raiding a bit.
They eat wasps. Every time wasps start a next on my house the starlings come, tear the nest apart, an eat the wasps as they come out. They are one of only four birds that will devour murder hornets.
As a New Yorker, pigeons are feathered rats, but starlings are a close second.
@@georgeb.wolffsohn30 Where I live, we have less of the built up spaces that pigeons like, so we have more starlings than pigeons.
You feed birds. Birds come to eat. Quit complaining.
@@nortyfiner I guess you get what you get and you don't get upset.
Another name for pigeon is rock dove which lived on cliffs. Cities are full of man-made cliffs.
Plus it's easier to find food.
Here in central Illinois the starlings will show up in droves in the spring. The WOOSHING sound when they decide to leave all at once is such a surreal thing to experience & take in.
It's why a group of starlings is call a murmur.
The first bird you called a Chickadee is actually a nuthatch, which I suppose is also a competitor with starlings since they are cavity nesters.
Starlings are curious creatures. We have a whole flock of them here that like to perch on top of buildings and people-watch. They seem to be show-offs, because they'll produce a whole myriad of sounds and calls. They are indeed curious creatures.
If you get one as a nestling, you can teach them to talk. They're related to Mynah birds but a heck of a lot cheaper!
I hate starlings. I know ours was started by some European ones that were imported here a couple hundred years ago.
They are nasty shit birds
They also have especially acidic crap that damages buildings and is home to all kinds of terrible stuff you don’t want in your lungs.
@@sheilatruax6172 You're a turd
Back home, a good indicator that your yard had grubs was that large flocks of starlings were all over your yard pecking away.
Little peckers!
Well, as bad as starlings are, at least they're not swallows. They've been known to carry coconuts when they migrate.
A decade or so ago, I was in San Antonio having lunch at a Taco Cabana. one of my work mates forgot his flatware, and set down his burrito to get some, a grackle flew in out of nowhere, and snatched up his burrito off the table and made off with it.
Here in Texas, they're generally a menace all around.
@@perseypoppins which? The swallows or the grackle? The swallows was an MP toss away. :)
The grackle story is true.
African or European swallow?
I swear at Stanford in the 1980’s the blackbirds learned to poop on your head if you ate outside. Then if you left your food unguarded to go wash the poop off, you’d find a flock of blackbirds shredding your food when you got back.
Anyone with a bird feeder curses Schieffelin’s name every time a flock of The Common European Starlings of the United States of North America cleans out a freshly hung feeder.
Not me, I love the fuckers. Song birds can go to your yard, they are soooo boring
@donnabert great targets 😉
@@Scrambler85I completely agree. Real easy to identify by those half-assed tails and hideous beaks.
Nothing a decent air rifle cant fix.....
Well at least now I know *who* to curse. 😏
I was recently at a family function and my grandma was talking about your channel. I was surprised as I don’t think our TH-cam subscriptions overlap much but we both love your channel without ever talking about it previously. So hi Granmomie if you see this! Love you! ❤😂
Did you know they can talk?!?!? I found that out this year. There are vids here on TH-cam
The bird shown at 1:16 isn't a chickadee, it's a white breasted nuthatch!
Yes, the nuthatch is easy. It walks down a tree trunk headfirst.
Starling feathers make for really great fly tying materials. I even have a starling pelt sitting here next to me!
In KY we had a major starling issue. But here in FL I have bluebirds every day... Our closest thing to a starling is a redwing blackbird. I remember when the starling were so numerous over the railroad yards in my home town in KY, there were massive piles of guano and noise, and ruining the trees and covering the railroad cars with guano. The fire department came out and sprayed all the grove of trees where thousand of them were inhabiting.. They sprayed them with soapy water, which cooled them down, whereupon they fell to the ground and mostly died...The clean up was a massive mess too.
Here in southern idaho in agricultural areas and they literally blotted out the sky and destroyed crops. The farmers were authorized to kill, bludgeon,poison, club, and ram with farm trucks as many starlings as possible. Happily, the body count for 1 time, one day scratch at least 10 thousand of those rotten nasty things ..
I wonder if looking for nests and stealing eggs would help? Less violent, and possibly more effective
@@lauralake7430 SorryThose starlings at that time were a plauge on thefarms and population. The commercial farmers did highly targeted poisoning because it was necessary, and well within the bounds of the law. On occasion we have had a murder of crows infest in great number in farmland but also the huge flocks infested complete downtown and shopping/ business areas. What did they do?? The city council , mayor, fish and game and police all tried lesser measures but . those were not even close to adequate. Solution,?????????? the major, city council, voted , and the mayor signed and authorized the police chief and the police force walked the streets with 12 gauge shotguns loaded with birdshot, everywhere, including downtown shopping areas, blasting the crows out of the air. Of course, by shooting at flying birse up in the air the birdshot loses momentum after 40 yards or so, and then falls like the gentle rain from heaven. It was noisy, and odd seeing cops blasting airborne crows in the city, but Americans' usually do not get very alarmed at gunfire, even the shopping districts. Hundreds of crows were eliminated out of necessity. Not a problem at all.
@@lauralake7430 Spread the word that starling eggs are good for your complexion and they'll go extinct.
@@Bob_Adkins
You can eat the birds as well.
My dad (and his grandmother), survived Christmas of 1944 by him snaring starlings.
Food was rationed.
Each person was allowed half a pound of beef mince for Christmas dinner.
Only the butcher was sold out...
Dad returned home with eight brace of birds, wich were spit roasted, as they had no fat to fry them in a pan...
Along with a few potatoes, that was a two day dinner.
Love from Norway ❤
We used to live by the local airport. When we first moved to the neighborhood we were horrified by loud booms occasionally. Come to find out, if there were birds on the tarmac, the birds would be frightened away long enough for planes to land or take off.
Yeah birds being sucked into jet engines is a disaster. You ever see the video of the chicken carcass being tossed into that huge engine and making it basically blow up? Yikes! 😱
One of the dairy farms in Fallon, NV uses a cannon for the same thing.
Love your post's Laurence. How you do that, without breaking up laughing, is beyond me. Oh, and the American accent part you did describing starlings? Hilarious!
When I was a kid, my family would visit extended family in WV, who owned a beautiful 500 acre farm. I "adopted" the elderly couple who owned all this paradise, calling them Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma has large fruit trees growing near the farmhouse, full of fresh, sweet, delicious plums which she used to make mouth watering jam and preserves. The starlings loved the plums.
My dad was an expert marksman on the US Army Rifle Team. His home is filled with first place medals he won. My dad didn't miss. Grandma always welcomed Dad like a long lost son because he would sit in a rocking chair on the porch and pick off starlings one by one on that big, lovely plum tree as she scooted around the kitchen, happy as a clam, knowing her precious plums would now be safe from the marauding starlings. We would return home with a quart jar of freshly canned damson preserves. 😋
Thanks dad!
i have one as a pet! i love this little bird so much. he talks, sings, and is so sweet.
@@perseypoppins lol they make great pets if you raise them from babies. i love my little bernie. hes so cute and sweet
Can you please take the rest of them inside so they stop bothering everyone? Thanks ❤
@@barbarianvee lol no. i am just fond of this particular one.
I've got one too, his name's Lenny. He's not a talker, though, I've raised others many years ago who talked but he's more of a grumbler but does imitate other noises (lots of kissing, tisking, that horse clicking noise, a bit of whistling, etc). But if I do a stretch and say "stretchy" he'll do the typical bird stretch routine, and if I imitate the bird "butt in the air with head down and legs straightened out" stretch (you'll know the one I mean), he'll do that, which is pretty cute. They're such characters, aren't they?
I hope your kidding
In my childhood, my next door neighbor had a relative who would visit, bringing his shotgun. He would piss off every dog in the neighborhood, shooting starlings. Boy he really hated them. We were once almost rural, then progress changed us to absolute suburbia. That’s when the city asked him to stop that.
We have the a-hole birds at the farm where I work. They try to nest under the LP tank covers, and we have to get the nests out. They're usually covered in mites too. In the fall when they flock up it's like being in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. 🙁
I really enjoy your segues into the ads. Brilliantly done.
These Ahole birds come to Florida in the winter. Where I once worked, they would roost in the trees on our parking lot. It was like being personally in the movie The Birds. I was always waiting for them to peck my eyes out, as they would chirp in the trees & then all take flight at once! Frightening!
A friend of mine said that happened to her and her husband in Mexico
They are aggressive and are known to swoop, but are cowards. So large movements, loud souds and throwing things is enough to deter them from coming at you.
It’s worth mentioning that starlings often destroy vent covers and build their nests in the vents causing damage to a property. Nest removal replacing vent pipe and replacing all the vents with metal ones has cost me $700 😢
a shit ton of birds and mammals do that. it's not a "starling" thing, lamebrain
European house sparrows do that too. We've got one nesting in our overhead stove vent.
Ugh...I had that same problem too
My mother had a native bird drive her crazy doing this: it was a Red-shafted Flicker. She learned to hate that species of woodpecker!
I've had grackles do that.
They're incredible mimicks and make awesome noises.
Its funny this came up. I have been shooting starlings off my barn all weekend.
US resident here. European Starlings are everywhere where I live, and I live in a very rural area. I've been tempted to do my local ecosystem a favor and hunt some to make a meat pie, but I don't think they'd taste very good.
The way they feed is funny too. They spend about as much time watching to see if another one of them got something, then they all run and push him out of the way to try and steal whatever he found.
Ah yes, damn starlings. Had them nesting in the peak of the roof in my previous house where the parents would dispose of their baby waste in my pool. In my new to me house they tried to nest in the bathroom vent exhaust. Needed to buy a cover and get up on a ladder to properly evict them. 🙄
Found you by accident but I love the content you provide. As a teacher you will know kids can’t be arsed learning but through comedy (like you do) in to subjects it more palatable and engaging to a point you don’t realise your learning because it’s fun (a bit like the show QI)
They're canny, too. Always nested in the eaves of our farmhouse, spot my dad "meant to fix". Mom encouraged us removing them. They figured out quickly enough when had a BB gun and our effective range. They wouldn't twitch from where they were sitting on a wire six feet above us if we weren't carrying, but would fly when we were 25 yards away if we had one.
No matter what videos you put out, you never fail to make me smile. Thank you.
I love many things English; Currently Yorkshire Tea holds a favored spot, but Starlings on the other hand; well, I don't recommend poison, but for the Starling I think an exception can be made.
I knew nothing about starlings until we moved into our new house 4.5 years ago. There's a copse of trees behind our new house, and I noticed on moving day that the trees were filled with (I'm guessing) 300-500+ small black birds. (It was March; the trees had no leaves, so we could see all the birds.) I had never seen that kind of mass-congregation of birds ever in my life, and haven't since, either. Only on moving day. It was like a trailer for a Hitchcock movie was happening in my back yard.
I called them speckled gobblers, cause they will gobble up everything that you put out, especially if it’s worms
Years ago we'd hear loud booms coming from Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana. I don't know what they used to create the noise, but I did learn they were trying to scare away Starlings.
I almost didn't watch this episode. I have a major bird phobia because of this creature. In my teens, we lived in a super creepy old house, and these things got into the attic, and then my bedroom. Have you been awoken at 3 am by a screaming, panicked, flapping bird flying into the bedposts and the window of your room? No?? Then I envy you! This happened multiple times over those years. My dad preferred to let our cat deal with it. So I would huddle, shaking, on our couch, under a covering blanket, waiting for the noise to stop, and for our cat to trot down the stairs. The twitching creature hanging from his mouth, beak and wings flopped backwards and bouncing with his steps. I shudder and twitch just thinking about it. This happened in the 80s. My brothers' worst threat was that he would leave a dead bird in my bed. I still duck when anything flies near me. The sounds of wings flapping makes me panic. Dead birds affect me just as deeply. I live in constant fear of finding a bird in my house. I avoid stores that attract birds, like Lowe's. I don't remember even noticing birds before they started showing up in our house. I would also look up at night to find bats flying in my room. Those are awful because they can be silent all day, just lurking, and spring out of nowhere after dark. Plus, the rabies. We kept dad's fishing net upstairs to deal with these issues. Okay, I can't continue. Good video, but absolute nightmare fuel!
Starlings are indeed quite transfixing. I've lost focus while driving more than once due to the mesmerizing wave-like shimmer of a large flock of them suddenly changing direction. Almost every year, I'll see them around harvest time above vineyards.
Eugene Schieffelin. Another of histories lesser known monsters.
Where I lived in the Midwest, starlings were always a problem in the late summer. The city actually had air cannons that residents could reserve to blast into the sky at dusk to startle the starlings and get them to fly off. I just relied on banging pots and pans outside when they were trying to roost for the evening. Their poop ends up everywhere and is acidic so it can damage painted surfaces.
But I do miss the beauty of a murmuration.
My mom and I always called starlings crazy birds. We didn’t really encounter them until we moved to Chester County Pennsylvania in the mid 1970s. They weren’t in Fairfield County Connecticut at least not in the HUGE numbers that they were in Pennsylvania. I haven’t seen that many in Southeast Michigan either. 🙂🐈🐈⬛💖🌈
Starlings were a major health hazard here back in the late 1960s and early '70s. There were so many birds roosting in nearby woods and copses and in trees all over the town, turning the ground white with their guano.
Hystoplasmosis was a real danger to human health because of it, so it was pretty common for firetrucks to go to various neighborhoods and run their sirens for a couple hours to get rid of the birds. They did eventually leave but it took a few years.
I worked at a private golf club which is also a property protected by the Audubon Society, and while there weren’t very many starlings on the open property, we had them under the Carriage House, which was built in 1895. I had to walk under there to approach my vehicle. They built their nest under the ceiling of the open car drive. They’d attack me at first, but I started walking on the other side, slowly, in view. They never went after me again.
All of nature has negatives, but they have their good points. I loved them a lot. They were always sweet. And built really cool nests.
I have a license plate (WA state) STARLNG
There are other smaller song birds that build really cool nests that have been pushed out and depopulated by the invasive Starlings; that's the point.
@@windycityliz7711 that's a myth
@@donnabert Maybe where you live. I have seen, many times, the results of mega-flocks taking over an area of woods. Oh, and then there are bird counts.
At 1:15 when you mention a chikadee you are actually showing a nuthatch. They do look very similar though.
That popping into the screen intro is my favorite intro of yours yet!
Thanks!
I had read that the goal was to introduce to America "All the birds found in the Bible."
While looking through the hunting seasons in my State it said that invasive Starlings & Sparrows are always "In Season".
They are directly killing off native species, and that will eventually have dire consequences. There is little else we can do but slow the growth of their population and bolster the native ones long enough for either a solution or the collapse of an ecosystem.
I enjoy watching them fly in their huge numbers, they make some wild shapes. What i don't like is when there are about a 100 or so in my neighbor's tree at 5:00AM singing as loud as they can....like waking up to static...
Starlings had one redeeming feature where I grew up in New York. They were known to eat at least two invasive species. They poke holes in the lawn to spear the grubs of Japanese beetles and have supposedly found a way to squeeze out the innards of the spiny caterpillars of gypsy moths.
The name was changed years ago , they are called spongy moths now due to the derogatory term used for Romani people ( gypsies)
@@alanomofo My apologies. I guess that means I'm making a spongy chicken recipe for dinner.
Sitting in my hotel room adjacent Hyde Park ,Baywater( Queensway Tube station) and watching this latest episode. Experiencing daily life in the UK adds an entirely new perspective to YOU and your videos. I will never be the same.
Ooooo Lawrence! Hehe love your take on things here in the States!
Starlings migrate through my area of the southwestern Great Plains in the summers but the real invader of recent times is the Eurasian collared dove. Every small town now has thousands of those noisy pests. There is a year-long hunting season on them with no bag limits but few are shot because they mostly stay in town and around farms. I recently counted thirty-two of them in my back yard alone. European house sparrows and pigeons are another two introduced bird pests that occur here. One bird introduction, however, has proved beneficial, and that is the ring-necked pheasant. On the fish side, brown trout are another beneficial introduction, Common carp and the several species of Asian carp, not so much.
Grackles are the sweetest, funniest birds And can talk and are easily trainable.
I had one that would bowl for peas. Adorable. ( they're not federally protected)
@@perseypoppins grackles are basically first cousins of crows and ravens.
Maybe you could also talk about what a curse English Ivy is to North America. It’s the kudzu of the north.
Retribution for the introduction of grey squirrels to the UK nearly wiping out native reds? I was surprised to see starlings (and sparrows) on my recent trip to Canada and this video explains it.
In 1972 I showed up at Texas A&M in Bryan / College Station; the campus was over-run with these bastards. I lived near the Gulf coast and had never heard of them. Now, they are in Galveston on the coast. We have lost all of our robins, mockingbirds, and every other species.
My son saw 2 starlings chasing a juvenile hawk away! They are very intrepid birds! I am in Toronto, Ontario
What a flawless execution on the ad intro. Hats off to you 🎩
The starling is a really cool bird to watch when they migrate, the line of starlings that goes for literal days across the sky for as far as you can see but out side of that they are the worst pest. They build nest in gutters downspouts and if they can get in an attic find another way in to a building they build nest in walls. I have spent more time fixing damage done by them than any other pest.
I have always known American Starlings as simply “Starlings”. Wonderful videos! Thanks to both of you. Cr- Missoula, Montana
I noticed that since starlings arrived in my area, woodpeckers, jays, and other birds are now hardly seen, specifically the woodpeckers; those are just gone... haven't seen them for about five years. 😢
The subscribe button flashed when you said "subscribe now." I just checked your channel out under the assumption you do all wildlife videos. Bit of a shock, but subscribing anyways! P. S. I think you'd be a really great nature video narrator.
Every autumn we would have tens of thousands of the things land in the trees and yards of our neighborhood when i was a youngster. They were the only critter my parents allowed me to go after with my pellet rifle. My buddies and I would set up blinds on our front porches to ambush the feathered pests. They made such a racket, we could get off multiple shots before they spooked but they would only fly around for a little while before settling back down on all the lawns in the neighborhood. Eventually the birds would move on to terrorize some other neighborhood a few streets away. We would have to pick up what we dispatched and dispose of them deep in the woods behind our houses. We would notice an increase in the population of stray cats in our vicinity over the following week. Guess we made them happy for a while.
In the Pittsburgh area the only wildlife the Steel Valley had was English Sparrows, Pigeons ( all gray) starlings and the occasional ‘possum. Wildlife didn’t fare well in the eastern ‘burbs until the steel mills died.
I was about to suggest you to do this! They are migrated. I've seen loads of them this year in the Midwest now that I'm a mailman
I live in KCMO area and Starlings have been common around here as long as I can remember. However ,when I saw about 6 of them in my yard a few weeks ago it was the first time in years that I've seen any. It seems like the population of all species of birds in this area has drastically decreased.
🔥Starlings Dangerous Hording Obsession 🔥Every year Starlings "build" ( frantically fill a space with a cartoonishly large stockpile of dry grass / hay) a huge number of nests inside almost every nook & cranny of the vehicles in our parking lot. Even atop the tires , engine areas etc. One woman's car caught fire 🔥Then they will target gas grills, awnings & more. One farmer told me they ruined thousands of dollars worth of equipment . It's like roulette , who's car they pick each year, It's nuts . They are also one of the messiest song birds when it comes to excitement where they live .
Starlings have an amazing ability for mimicry and are very intelligent. They make pretty good pet birds. Since they're invasive, bird rehabilitation centers can't release them back into the wild when people bring them in injured or in abandoned nests and many rehab places will often (laws permitting, I guess) adopt them out to people as pets as they're so common (especially in spring).
They bond with owners. So, if you're interested in keeping a bird and have the resources to have one, they're worth looking into and contacting your local bird and waterfowl rehabilitation centers about their starling adoption policy as they otherwise need to be placed in wildlife sanctuaries, where there will always be limited space.
The editing and humour got me to subscribe…great content too.
The “attractive people in mugshots” bit made me cackle. Well done there.
The one good thing about Starlings is that they love grubs! In fact they line up in a row and march across my yard pecking away eating one grub after another. Unfortunately they also love eating grain and in the winter they congregate down south around cattle pens eating more grain then the cattle.
I’m a new bird observer. Thank you for explaining something I was wondering about.
Edwin Way Teale wrote a wonderful series of books about the American seasons. His " Wandering Though Winter" won a Pulitzer prize for non fiction.
Great video, Lawrence...😊
Oooh, Lawrence, at 1:15 that wasn't a chickadee; it was a nuthatch. And you don't want them out-competed by starlings either!
I've always loved them, I think they are beautiful. I had no idea they weren't native, since I'm not a big bird guy.
I truly enjoy the Starling couple that live above and visit my yard. To watch the babies poke their heads out the hole that was drilled by the local woodpecker was fun. Without Starlings our nature sounds would be dulled. Starlings can vocalise and that's the most amazing things about them plus they are cute when they hit the birdbath.
The bird pictured at 1:15 is a nuthatch, not a chickadee. They are close in size and very similarly colored, so it's an understandable error.
A bit of starling trivia: like parrots, they can be taught to talk. As an aside, myna birds, which are famous for being good talkers, are species of starling.
I know all about their faults, but to be caught up inside a mummeration is truly awesome. To stand with arms out while thousands of feathers, and even fragile bodies, brush all over is a one of a kind experience that I have no words for.
We all have our faults, and I'll speak no ill of these tiny warriors.
I think they have by far the best vocal abilities of any birds of their size. I’ve been amazed hearing them speak and mimic other sounds.
They’re excellent mimics…birdsongs and people talk
I agree. We have one that nests nearby and his “song” consists of all kinds of bird imitations, a siren, an engine, and other mechanical sounds. I love watching the parents tend to their young after they have fledged. When the young one gets too pushy, mom or dad puts them in their place!
I would teach one to say "quit starling" every time someone's taking too long at something.
Yes, maybe they can talk, but do they say anything useful?
Edwin Way Teale was from Joliet, Illinois. He did not sound like he was from unspecified place near the Hudson River south of Hudson, NY.
Starlings are great mimics! There’s another kind of plus!
I live up North. We have starlings in summer but I've never seen any swarms.
In my area, Starlings often aggregate in large groups of 100 or more. It's quite impressive to see so many in one spot, and it really causes us to appreciate their finer qualities... until we go outside and realize that our entire house and everything around it is covered in bird poo 🫤
There is a song that goes "I wish I was sn English bird. I wouylf sit up on the steeple and s*it fown on all the people." I have slso felt that this anonymous bird was a starling.
Also my grandmother HATED grackles. She said they were awful birds but never explained why. Now Lawrence has also made disparaging words without explanation. Why does everybody hate grackles?
Just intelligent enough to get into trouble, too stupid to fathom the consequences. They are also notorious feeder bullies in quite a few places. Grackles are mean but not quite as malicious as the starlings. To starlings infanticide and nest takeovers are routine to them. To the point they would rather steal than find their own, even if another family is living there already... They are putting several species in severe decline where I live due to their habits.
You forgot a few important points: they are extremely intelligent, therefore resilient and extremely adaptable.
Also they can talk & mimic anything.
Lastly, they make awesome pets!
I found a nestling about two days old on the ground; no nest in sight. My ususal wildlife rehabber had severe COVID.
I sent him a picture, per his request, and he guided me through raising the little bird.
Fast forward two+ years later, and Munson is the light of my life.
A single starling isn't releasable, i dont even think he knows he's a bird.
Lawrence have you ever considered talking about turkeys as a video topic. Its both a commonly seen somewhat large animal that has quite a bit of cultural significance in america. Just thpught it would be a good idea.
The ones here, near the West Coast seem to superficially resemble robins. They have orange chests, but are smaller. They have huge flocks, thousands if not millions of birds. They tend to resemble schools of fish when flying through the air, and a flock can take hours to pass overhead. These may be different birds, but we refer to them as "starlings".