Originally published 27 August 1984
Economists have a maxim called Gresham’s Law that says “bad money will always drive out good.” Sometimes I think ecologists should enunciate a similar principle.
Against my best efforts, dandelions have driven the good grass from the lawn. Poison ivy has crept in from the woody verges to occupy the flower beds. And starlings…well, starlings have descended upon the bird feeder with an all-excluding voraciousness.
For the starlings, we must thank Eugene Schieffelin.
Schieffelin was a wealthy New York socialite who dreamed of bringing a bit of Old World culture to his New World compatriots. His plan was as simple as it was ingenious: introduce into America every species of bird mentioned by Shakespeare not already native to this land. In 1890 and 1891, Schieffelin imported and released into Central Park a collection of the Bard’s avian allusions, among them the skylark, the nightingale and the common starling (Sturnus vulgaris).
Range is spreading
It is not known whether Schieffelin’s curious experiment raised the literary consciousness of New Yorkers, but the fate of the birds is easily documented. The skylark and the nightingale did not find New York to their taste and faded from sight, but the starling flourished. Soon it was nesting in the eaves of the American Museum of Natural History at the edge of the park. Twenty years later, the descendants of the original 100 birds had reached Providence and Philadelphia. A decade more and they were distributed from Maine to Virginia. The ornithologist Frank Chapman, writing in Natural History magazine in 1925, noted the starling’s successful traverse of the Alleghenys and predicted that not even the Rockies or the Sierra would stop the bird’s reckless advance. He was correct. The starling’s range now extends from coast to coast and from central Canada to Mexico, and in numbers that stagger. A nationwide census might count birds in these proportions: 1 great blue heron, 10 bluebirds, 100 indigo buntings and 1000 starlings. The actual number of starlings is greater than 100 million. The starling may be the most populous bird in America.
The starling is a gregarious bird. Its territorial needs are limited. It produces two, sometimes three, broods a year. Its appetite in omnivorous. It is not choosy about its environment. It competes with bluebirds, tree swallows and flickers for nesting holes and has no compunctions about appropriating another bird’s nest or pushing a larger bird aside. These and other attributes have fueled the starling’s relentless proliferation.
New England is spared the huge winter roosts of starlings that have plagued communities to the south and west. Hardly a year goes by that we do not read of some beleaguered town driven to distraction by a convocation of starlings.
Last year, the citizens of Dover, N.J., broadcast the cries of distressed birds in a vain attempt to rid town trees of an army of invaders. One official said: “These starlings are so clever and determined. There’s so many of them that it is easy for us to just give up.”
A California community enlisted model airplanes to engage hundreds of the dirty, noisy birds in dogfights. Five model airplanes were knocked out of the sky; the starlings suffered no casualties. The encounter of starlings and airplanes can sometimes be more serious. A military airfield in Kentucky was closed down in evening hours when starlings swarmed across the runways in clouds of millions. A flock of starlings ingested into the engines were the probable cause for the fatal crash of an Electra turboprop that fell from the sky on takeoff from Logan Airport in Boston in 1960. Sixty-two persons dies in that accident.
They thrive in cities
In spring, the great winter roosts to the south and west break up. The birds scatter to local nesting sites and spread themselves out over the northern tier of states and Canada. Starlings have become well adapted to coexistence with man. They thrive in cities, on the median strips of busy highways, and on the carefully tended lawns of suburbia. They avoid the wild places, the forests and the high grass. They travel in single-minded, apparently leaderless, crowds. They swoop and swirl in black clouds like the exhaust of internal combustion engines. They flow in sheets across meadows like hot asphalt.
In it speckled winter plumage the starling is almost pretty. In the bird’s favor it can probably be said that its appetite for cutworms, Japanese beetles, and other injurious insects is of benefit to the gardener. More likely, the starling turns the garden into an arena of chattering, posturing usurpers who drive sparrows and titmice from the feeders. As long ago as 1925, ornithologist Frank Chapman complained: “There are times when the starling makes such strong demands upon our hospitality that even its friends resent its presence.”
As I write, starlings in the backyard are making a terrible racket. They chirp, they squeal, they whistle, they chatter, they creak, they croak. They march across the lawn with a jerky military step as if determined to have the place to themselves. Only the blue jay dares to enter their space. Explosives, air horns, chemical detergents, and model airplanes have failed to drive the upstart birds away. Of what use, then, will be my timid “shoo”?
