European Starling

About the European Starling

Love it or not, the European Starling is one of the great success stories in bird history - all of the several hundred million starlings in North America descend from about a hundred birds released in New York's Central Park in 1890 by a society that wanted America to have every bird mentioned by Shakespeare.

Up close the bird deserves more credit than it gets: fresh winter plumage is black spangled with white stars (the "starling"), and by spring the spots wear away to reveal oily green-and-purple iridescence, with a bill turned bright yellow.

Starlings are gifted mimics, weaving imitations of killdeer, hawks, and phone alerts into their wheezy running commentary, and their winter murmurations - thousands of birds pouring across the sky in shape-shifting clouds - are among the most spectacular sights in nature, cause of the flock traffic jams on Texas power lines every winter evening.

Their success has costs: starlings evict woodpeckers, bluebirds, and other native cavity nesters, which is why this dazzling, clever bird remains genuinely controversial.