100 species #6: European Starling

[urbpan]

European starlings Sturnus vulgaris feeding on lawn invertebrates. Starlings are opportunistic omnivores feeding on insects, fruit, and corn. They are even zoo pests, eating duck food from the wetlands feeders and stealing ground carnivore diet from the wolves!

I'm going to be playing a bit of catch-up with these "100 species" posts. My original intention was to post 2 species a week (with 2 weeks wiggle room). But since we moved in later than we intended, my time has been taken up with other things. Fortunately, the sudden explosion of life the next few posts will represent is appropriate to the change of the seasons and the exciting appearance of new living things. This will also delay my inevitable string of boring posts about evergreen shrubs until the end of the year--let's hope, any way.

In any case, here's an unsurprising species! The starling is one of the most common birds in the world, the world having suffered the misfortune of Shakespeare mentioning the bird in a play. Enterprising Shakespeare fans with entirely too much time and money then imported these versatile animals to many places that had not yet been blessed with them. The result in the present day is the endangerment of native birds through competetion, destruction of agricultural products, and the creation of a flying urban pest. Still, they are not charmless with their scraggly good looks, ability to mimic birds and other animals, and fascinatingly intelligent behavior.

The European starling has appeared at this blog before as Urban Species #40, and many other occasions.

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