{"id":16,"date":"2007-01-14T00:42:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-14T04:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2007\/01\/14\/16\/"},"modified":"2007-01-14T00:42:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-14T04:42:00","slug":"16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2007\/01\/14\/16\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

For the Birds – Starling Roosting Behavior<\/span><\/p>\n

If you have driven or been walking in urban areas or near farms lately, you have likely seen large flocks of birds, wheeling in all directions. Those birds are European Starlings and they are preparing to go to roost. Here are some fantastic photographs of starling flocks in flight: http:\/\/epod.usra.edu\/archive\/images\/sortsolsum-05042006-hw.jpg<\/p>\n

Many species of birds have communal night\u2013time roosts. Because of their preferences for urban habitats, starlings\u2019 roosting behavior is one of the most frequently observed. I\u2019ve seen flocks of more than 1,000 birds in Maine but that pales in comparison to a roosting flock of starlings, Common Grackles and Brown-headed Cowbirds in Kentucky that had over a million birds in an area of only five acres. Not a good place to park your car!<\/p>\n

Why roost in such large numbers? One advantage is that there is safety in numbers. It’s awfully hard for a predator to sneak up on a large number of sleeping birds without being detected. In cold weather, huddling together helps to conserve heat. A third and more controversial explanation hinges on information sharing. This explanation presumes that birds forage for food in different areas during the day and then let other birds in the roost know about profitable feeding areas. Some of the best evidence for information sharing has been obtained for Turkey Vultures. For many other species that have communal roosts, ornithologists have found no evidence that roosting birds share such information.<\/p>\n

A century ago, flocks of starlings could not be seen in Maine, or scarcely anywhere in North America for that matter. The species was introduced in North America by the release of 60 birds in 1890 by Eugene Sheflin. Sheflin was a wealthy drug manufacturer who was attempting to introduce all of the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays into Central Park as a hobby. Aided by a second introduction of 40 birds in 1891, a starling population in North America took hold and began to spread rapidly.<\/p>\n

In Maine, a flock of 25-30 starlings was first seen in 1913 in Rumford. The first ones reported in Waterville were seen in 1921. To the east, starlings appeared in Nova Scotia in 1915. A glance at a map in your bird field guide shows that starlings are now present in all of the lower 48 states, all of the Canadian provinces, Mexico and Alaska. The population in North America now exceeds 200 million birds. This astounding increase is one of the most successful introductions of exotic species.<\/p>\n

Starlings are most frequently seen in cities and towns but are also common around farms and in suburban areas. They typically do not occur in heavily forested areas. Like many introduced species, starlings have had a negative impact on many native birds. Starlings nest in cavities and aggressively fight for such nest sites. As a result of this competition with starlings, native cavity-nesting species like Northern Flickers, Great Crested Flycatchers, Tree Swallows, Purple Martins, House Wrens and Eastern Bluebirds have been displaced from favored breeding sites. Bluebirds and flickers have been most profoundly affected. Fortunately, bluebird populations have been rebounding as many people have erected nest boxes whose openings are small enough to exclude starlings.<\/p>\n

Starlings have quite a broad diet; about half of their food is insects that are taken from the ground. Starlings’ preference for weevils, cutworms and Japanese beetles makes these birds valuable from an agricultural perspective.<\/p>\n

Starlings change in an interesting way from a spotted plumage in the winter to a glossy-black plumage in the summer. After an early fall molt, the tips of the new black body feathers are tipped with white and buff, giving the bird a speckled appearance. Over the winter, the tips of these feathers wear away, removing the speckling. The breeding plumage is said to be acquired by wear, rather than by molt.<\/p>\n

The vocalizations of starlings are impressively varied, ranging from a clear \u201cwolf\u201d whistle to high-pitched trills to harsh chattering. Starlings are also accomplished mimics, accurately reproducing the sounds of other starlings and other birds, other animals besides birds and even inanimate noises. Male and female starlings are both capable of mimicking human speech.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had a pet starling. It died three years after he purchased it from a pet shop. Devoted to his starling, Mozart gave the starling a first-class funeral (far grander than his own funeral). Eight days after his starling\u2019s death, Mozart wrote a sextet called A Musical Joke. The odd structure of the piece baffled early critics but now it seems that the intertwined themes and the off-key whistles represented the singing of his dear pet.<\/p>\n

[Originally published on November 6, 2006]<\/p>\n\n

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For the Birds – Starling Roosting Behavior If you have driven or been walking in urban areas or near farms lately, you have likely seen large flocks of birds, wheeling in all directions. Those birds are European Starlings and they are preparing to go to roost. Here are some fantastic photographs of starling flocks in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}