7 ms·

Even if we don’t love starlings, we should learn to live with them

30 points by magda_wang 9y ago

xutopia 9y ago
My first thought didn't go to living with them... my thought went towards eating them. Little birds tend to be quite tasty and if it is nearly impossible to get rid of them I'd say would be a nice source of protein.
- fwefwwfe 9y ago
  Do you eat them whole, without the feathers?
  - twosville 9y ago
    Maybe blinded, drowned in liquor, and eaten whole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#Gastronomy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#Gastronomy
    - michaelmrose 9y ago
      This is kind of horrifying.
- yellowapple 9y ago
  Mmmm, starlet nuggets.
  - twothamendment 9y ago
    How many starlings does it take to make a nugget?
- Luc 9y ago
  It's illegal to catch them now in Europe. Harder to catch by poachers than they once used to be, since there's much less of them around. They taste like quail, apparently.
smcl 9y ago
I had no idea people disliked them. The main thing I knew about Starlings was their murmurations - large swarms of them undulating and swirling in the air. Actually recently a school friend of mine did some sketches of them which were pretty neat: https://www.dougieharley.com/single-post/2017/02/02/Starling-Murmuration-series-out-10th-Feb https://www.dougieharley.com/single-post/2017/02/02/Starling...
- optimuspaul 9y ago
  Love those.
- twobyfour 9y ago
  Starlings aren't so bad except that they're natural mimics. In urban environments that means that they frequently learn to mimic urban noise pollution as part of their bird calls. Here in NYC, you can have the police tow a car whose alarm goes off too frequently or doesn't shut down after a couple minutes. Not much you can do about a bird near your window mimicking the same sound with praeternatural accuracy every 30 seconds, all day long.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I had the impression they were like sparrows in that they swarm all over food sources and are in particular a scourge for backyard birding because they'll kill off the birds you actually want to see (and consume a ton of seed while they're at it).
  - Angostura 9y ago
    Nope.
  - cnnsucks 9y ago
    I have a feeder I put about two pounds of seed in a day. Doves, red-winged blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, house finches and house sparrows all get their share. The sparrows aren't "swarming" anyone out. If anything the red-winged blackbirds are the bullies. I have a bird house with a pair of sparrows. About 20" above that is a nest of breeding Robins that like a spot on the underside of my deck. The sparrows have never messed with the Robin nest in any way. There are eastern bluebirds nearby and the sparrows have caused no trouble for them either, despite the suitability of the house. This "HOSP" hate is misplaced. Please don't hate on these birds. There are a couple pages on the Internet about the awful depredations of the terrible HOSP and so hating on them has become a fad.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
On the topic of creating more friendly urban areas for birds, it has been suggested that making the sides of very tall buildings more amenable to raptor nesting (falcon, hawk) that not only would it benefit those species it could help manage pigeon and starling populations. That said, having had a hawk nesting site near my house there are a lot of feather piles to deal with :-)
- RyanMcGreal 9y ago
  I used to work in a building with a family of peregrine falcons living on the roof. It was never a dull moment outside our window!
  - hockeybias 9y ago
    Used to work across the street from a high-rise with a peregrine nest. Loved watching them chow down on their prey outside my window!
- trhway 9y ago
  some people argue that cats are decimating urban bird population (that is utter garbage of course), so bringing in more predators (who would hunt much higher proportion of healthy vs. ill birds than the cats) may not sit well with such heads.
  - exhilaration 9y ago
    that is utter garbage of course I don't have a dog (or cat) in this fight, but I've always heard that cats do indeed decimate bird populations. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
    - trhway 9y ago
      The bird population is mostly decimated by urban and agricultural development. What little left is subjected to other dangers - most damage is during the most vulnerable stage of egg - the nests are raided for eggs by rats and people (wild bird eggs is a delicacy for many and one such egg gatherer can collect all eggs from a small city park in one lazy afternoon). Cats come on the stage in 2 roles, both are beneficial for bird population - controlling rat population and eating ill birds. Anecdotally, my grandmother's farm (as well as the farms around) had very bustling population of small birds nesting in/on the house/barns as well as multiple semi-feral farm cats roaming everywhere. And there were periodically piles of bird feathers&bones found in the attic of the main house where the cats had their den. There were never a rat or mouse anywhere on the developed part of the farm while i frequently saw those cats carrying a mouse in their mouth back from the hunt out in the fields.
juiyout 9y ago
Outside of my office window, there are always groups of them starlings chatting about. They get extremely noisy. Not only they chased away much gentler pigeons, interrupted business negotiations with clients, they managed to pushed one of my designers over the edge who had a mental break down in the office.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Your designer suffers from mental illness. Plenty of people need help. The causes are as complex as the people and I'm pretty sure the birds didn't make him/her ill.
rdiddly 9y ago
I used to be down with trying to restore things to pre-Caucasians-in-North-America conditions wherever possible. Now upon seeing that that would take constant and intensive human intervention, and probably still not succeed, I tend to look more toward post-human conditions as the measuring stick. If all humans suddenly disappeared or stopped intervening, what would the landscape look like or turn into? Conditions would prevail that were affected by everything humans have done to date, but unaffected by any future human action. So for example, blackberry vines, kudzu, ivy, starlings, rats, and such, would take over, at least in some places, at least for a while. Is that bad? If humans disappeared, who would be around to find it bad or good? Rather than fight it, I have redefined my ideas of "native" and "natural" to match these conditions. Because that's what "nature" is, right? That which happens without human intervention? Except of course tons of intervention has already happened and can't be changed, so the idea is to think about what would happen if the intervention stopped. Keeping endangered species alive or fighting invasives might be termed unsustainable and artificial under that view. I dunno, interesting thought experiment. To me anyway! LOL
- dwighttk 9y ago
  why are humans not part of "nature"?
  - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
    Shh, don't be difficult. Only stone-age humans are natural. You shall not use bronze, and iron is right out. Fossil fuel is Cthulhu.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    Yeah that part is a shaky construct, I agree. Which is kind of what got me started on this line of thought. The whole idea of 'restoration' that I used to espouse, rests on getting things back to a "natural" state, meaning a state without or before humans. So there's your separation right there. I started thinking like, well too late, humans have been here. But just for fun let's pretend they instantaneously stopped being here; what would the "natural," "human-free" world look like then? It would look like what humans have made it into, plus whatever latent conditions we also caused but might be holding back by e.g. controlling rat populations or whatnot, plus whatever areas/systems/ecologies are and were always outside our influence.
weatherlight 9y ago
I had a pet starling as a kid. It fell out of its tree when it was a baby, I nursed it back to health, it got feathers and at about 1 year it started mimicking the sound of the doorbell :) All and all, a cool little bird.
pjc50 9y ago
I was expecting a mention of Mao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign In the UK, starlings are a protected species..
- kefabean 9y ago
  Exactly, was just going to add that they are red listed as a high conservation concern in the UK: https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/s/starling/population_conservation.aspx https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife...
towndrunk 9y ago
Well there is this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIklqgXi05A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIklqgXi05A They are kind of pests on cattle ranches.
danschumann 9y ago
My parents are obsessed birders and just about the only time I hear my mom swear is regarding a starling. It makes me wonder why there has never been a general order to hunt as many as possible. If the government paid $4/corpse, for a time, perhaps we'd be rid of them! (As long as we stopped paying when people tried breeding then for money, like the cobra)
- mabbo 9y ago
  The day you offer money is the day I start breeding them.
  - Tyrannosaur 9y ago
    For those wondering, there is a specific term for this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
wizardforhire 9y ago
This is one of my favorite art projects. It's goal was to teach starlings to say Schieffelin. Idk how successful it was. http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm

30 points by magda_wang 9y ago

My first thought didn't go to living with them... my thought went towards eating them. Little birds tend to be quite tasty and if it is nearly impossible to get rid of them I'd say would be a nice source of protein.

fwefwwfe 9y ago
Do you eat them whole, without the feathers?
- twosville 9y ago
  Maybe blinded, drowned in liquor, and eaten whole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#Gastronomy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#Gastronomy
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    This is kind of horrifying.
yellowapple 9y ago
Mmmm, starlet nuggets.
- twothamendment 9y ago
  How many starlings does it take to make a nugget?
Luc 9y ago
It's illegal to catch them now in Europe. Harder to catch by poachers than they once used to be, since there's much less of them around. They taste like quail, apparently.

smcl 9y ago

I had no idea people disliked them. The main thing I knew about Starlings was their murmurations - large swarms of them undulating and swirling in the air. Actually recently a school friend of mine did some sketches of them which were pretty neat: https://www.dougieharley.com/single-post/2017/02/02/Starling-Murmuration-series-out-10th-Feb https://www.dougieharley.com/single-post/2017/02/02/Starling...

optimuspaul 9y ago
Love those.
twobyfour 9y ago
Starlings aren't so bad except that they're natural mimics. In urban environments that means that they frequently learn to mimic urban noise pollution as part of their bird calls. Here in NYC, you can have the police tow a car whose alarm goes off too frequently or doesn't shut down after a couple minutes. Not much you can do about a bird near your window mimicking the same sound with praeternatural accuracy every 30 seconds, all day long.
emodendroket 9y ago
I had the impression they were like sparrows in that they swarm all over food sources and are in particular a scourge for backyard birding because they'll kill off the birds you actually want to see (and consume a ton of seed while they're at it).
- Angostura 9y ago
  Nope.
- cnnsucks 9y ago
  I have a feeder I put about two pounds of seed in a day. Doves, red-winged blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, house finches and house sparrows all get their share. The sparrows aren't "swarming" anyone out. If anything the red-winged blackbirds are the bullies. I have a bird house with a pair of sparrows. About 20" above that is a nest of breeding Robins that like a spot on the underside of my deck. The sparrows have never messed with the Robin nest in any way. There are eastern bluebirds nearby and the sparrows have caused no trouble for them either, despite the suitability of the house. This "HOSP" hate is misplaced. Please don't hate on these birds. There are a couple pages on the Internet about the awful depredations of the terrible HOSP and so hating on them has become a fad.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

On the topic of creating more friendly urban areas for birds, it has been suggested that making the sides of very tall buildings more amenable to raptor nesting (falcon, hawk) that not only would it benefit those species it could help manage pigeon and starling populations. That said, having had a hawk nesting site near my house there are a lot of feather piles to deal with :-)

RyanMcGreal 9y ago
I used to work in a building with a family of peregrine falcons living on the roof. It was never a dull moment outside our window!
- hockeybias 9y ago
  Used to work across the street from a high-rise with a peregrine nest. Loved watching them chow down on their prey outside my window!
trhway 9y ago
some people argue that cats are decimating urban bird population (that is utter garbage of course), so bringing in more predators (who would hunt much higher proportion of healthy vs. ill birds than the cats) may not sit well with such heads.
- exhilaration 9y ago
  that is utter garbage of course I don't have a dog (or cat) in this fight, but I've always heard that cats do indeed decimate bird populations. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
  - trhway 9y ago
    The bird population is mostly decimated by urban and agricultural development. What little left is subjected to other dangers - most damage is during the most vulnerable stage of egg - the nests are raided for eggs by rats and people (wild bird eggs is a delicacy for many and one such egg gatherer can collect all eggs from a small city park in one lazy afternoon). Cats come on the stage in 2 roles, both are beneficial for bird population - controlling rat population and eating ill birds. Anecdotally, my grandmother's farm (as well as the farms around) had very bustling population of small birds nesting in/on the house/barns as well as multiple semi-feral farm cats roaming everywhere. And there were periodically piles of bird feathers&bones found in the attic of the main house where the cats had their den. There were never a rat or mouse anywhere on the developed part of the farm while i frequently saw those cats carrying a mouse in their mouth back from the hunt out in the fields.

juiyout 9y ago

Outside of my office window, there are always groups of them starlings chatting about. They get extremely noisy. Not only they chased away much gentler pigeons, interrupted business negotiations with clients, they managed to pushed one of my designers over the edge who had a mental break down in the office.

michaelmrose 9y ago
Your designer suffers from mental illness. Plenty of people need help. The causes are as complex as the people and I'm pretty sure the birds didn't make him/her ill.

rdiddly 9y ago

I used to be down with trying to restore things to pre-Caucasians-in-North-America conditions wherever possible. Now upon seeing that that would take constant and intensive human intervention, and probably still not succeed, I tend to look more toward post-human conditions as the measuring stick. If all humans suddenly disappeared or stopped intervening, what would the landscape look like or turn into? Conditions would prevail that were affected by everything humans have done to date, but unaffected by any future human action. So for example, blackberry vines, kudzu, ivy, starlings, rats, and such, would take over, at least in some places, at least for a while. Is that bad? If humans disappeared, who would be around to find it bad or good? Rather than fight it, I have redefined my ideas of "native" and "natural" to match these conditions. Because that's what "nature" is, right? That which happens without human intervention? Except of course tons of intervention has already happened and can't be changed, so the idea is to think about what would happen if the intervention stopped. Keeping endangered species alive or fighting invasives might be termed unsustainable and artificial under that view. I dunno, interesting thought experiment. To me anyway! LOL

dwighttk 9y ago
why are humans not part of "nature"?
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
  Shh, don't be difficult. Only stone-age humans are natural. You shall not use bronze, and iron is right out. Fossil fuel is Cthulhu.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Yeah that part is a shaky construct, I agree. Which is kind of what got me started on this line of thought. The whole idea of 'restoration' that I used to espouse, rests on getting things back to a "natural" state, meaning a state without or before humans. So there's your separation right there. I started thinking like, well too late, humans have been here. But just for fun let's pretend they instantaneously stopped being here; what would the "natural," "human-free" world look like then? It would look like what humans have made it into, plus whatever latent conditions we also caused but might be holding back by e.g. controlling rat populations or whatnot, plus whatever areas/systems/ecologies are and were always outside our influence.

weatherlight 9y ago

I had a pet starling as a kid. It fell out of its tree when it was a baby, I nursed it back to health, it got feathers and at about 1 year it started mimicking the sound of the doorbell :) All and all, a cool little bird.

pjc50 9y ago

I was expecting a mention of Mao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign In the UK, starlings are a protected species..

kefabean 9y ago
Exactly, was just going to add that they are red listed as a high conservation concern in the UK: https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/s/starling/population_conservation.aspx https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife...

towndrunk 9y ago

Well there is this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIklqgXi05A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIklqgXi05A They are kind of pests on cattle ranches.

danschumann 9y ago

My parents are obsessed birders and just about the only time I hear my mom swear is regarding a starling. It makes me wonder why there has never been a general order to hunt as many as possible. If the government paid $4/corpse, for a time, perhaps we'd be rid of them! (As long as we stopped paying when people tried breeding then for money, like the cobra)

mabbo 9y ago
The day you offer money is the day I start breeding them.
- Tyrannosaur 9y ago
  For those wondering, there is a specific term for this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

wizardforhire 9y ago

This is one of my favorite art projects. It's goal was to teach starlings to say Schieffelin. Idk how successful it was. http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm