The Urban Pantheist

I'm sorry I can't find the article, but I recently read in hard copy (I believe it was Audubon) about a study where starlings were kept in researchers' homes for spans of 12 months or more to study their ability to mimic. What the researchers found was that starlings were easily able to learn to mimic phrases, songs played by musical instruments, and other, less "songlike" noises (I think one mimicked a coffee grinder) but that rather than simply repeating what the heard, the starlings would pick and choose what they wanted to use as song. So for example, one bird would repeat a phrase from a piano piece, but cut out before the pause at the end of the phrase. Another example was of one who screamed, "I have a question!" while receiving medical treatment. I wish I could find the article; it raised some interesting questions about the ability to interpret as well as learn. I believe the article title was "Why you can't teach a starling to sing."