A murmur about starlings

And how a terrible event this week changed my thinking

For most of my life I had no idea what a starling looked like up close, but I’ve been lucky enough to witness their murmurations on more than one occasion.

If you’re not familiar, when a flock of starlings flies in formation, making magically choreographed patterns and undulating images in the sky, it’s known as a murmuration. It’s truly a breathtaking spectacle (see an example in the video below), which for me felt quite profound.

That’s why I was so surprised when a friend and fellow bird watcher threw shade on these winged geniuses while we were chatting on the phone about our bird feeders a few years back.

“The songbirds don’t come to my feeder,” she lamented, “because the stupid starlings muscle in and get everything. They’re such bullies.”

“I’ve never seen a starling in my yard,” I mused, “just obnoxious grackles.” So I asked her to describe them, and she described … the grackles.

Over to Google Images I went after we hung up, and discovered I didn’t have grackles after all. The speckled bullies chasing away my finches and chickadees were in fact starlings. So now I loathed them, too.

It had started just a few years earlier, when huge numbers of what I wrongly cussed out as grackles started showing up in the spring, turning me homicidal with their rusty-gate-hinge squawking that went on for hours. Perched in our big cedar, they’d wait for the neighbour directly behind us to emerge in the morning and perform his feeding ritual. After pouring out shelled peanuts - maybe more than once a day, and probably other treats as well - he gives a little whistle. Three notes, one high and two low, that summon magpies, crows and starlings en masse.

Magpies stash the peanuts in my grass for posterity, where my dog sniffs them out, digs them up, and horks them down. Crows take their food and fly away with it, just as blue jays will do when they show up. But the starlings like to have a hearty breakfast across the fence, then pop over to my feeder for a fine songbird-mix dessert. This goes on for what seems like ages until they’re at a certain stage with nesting, which thins out the crowd at my seed buffet so actual songbirds can finally have a crack at it.

And so I’ve cursed the ‘stupid starlings’ along with my friend ever since, murmuration wonders notwithstanding.

Then, this fall, we bought a black oilseed mix by mistake and it turned out to be the best thing ever. Happily, the starlings turned their beaks up at it, making way for finches, two species of sparrows (don’t hate on sparrows, they’re lovely), chickadees, nuthatches and juncos. It’s been a delightful few months of birdwatching from the kitchen sink, during an unseasonably warm winter.

Earlier this week, weather warnings alerted us to an approaching deep-cold front, and just as I was getting ready to put some high-calorie suet out for the birds, WHAM - something huge smashed into the front window. As I ran to investigate I could already see a large form with speckled wings laying in the snow. “Oh no,” I thought, “it’s a northern flicker.”

But no, as I got to the window and pulled the blinds fully open I locked eyes with the sharp gaze of a Merlin falcon, pinning down a hapless starling. The little raptor must have snatched the bird in mid-air very close to the house, tumbling into the window at high speed.

The starling, alive but held fast, tried mightily to bite its attacker even as shreds were being torn from its neck and breast. Its wings flickered weakly and it continued attempting to bite as its life faded away.

I stood there paralyzed for a bit, but then felt ill and turned away, tearing up. I paced. When I went back to look, they were gone. The predator had taken its prey to a less exposed location. Tiny flecks of blood and wing impressions in the snow were soon covered over by the wind, as if nothing had happened.

I’m fully aware every creature needs to eat, and as awful as the circle-of-life moment I saw the other day was, I feel weirdly lucky to have witnessed something few people will get to see. Props to the starling for its bravery. They’ll all be welcome at my feeders with no more grumbling from me.