Educate Yourself About the Eoropean Starling and its Habitat
European Starling
The European Starling has a black plumage with glossy, green-and-purple sheen, reddish brown legs, triangular wings, and a short square-ended tail. Its length is 8in (20cm)
Its wingspan is 14-16in (36-41cm) Its voice is medley of rattles, squeaks, and whistles, mingled with other birds calls. Their eggs are smooth pale blue-green with a slight gloss, with 2 clutches consisting of 4-5 or (4-7) eggs. The female incubates for about 11-15 days and fledging time is around 21 days. Both male and female feed their young. The female looks similar but for a pink colored base of the bill. Juveniles have a mouse-brown colored plumage with a dark bill.
The European Starlings with its springtime glossy, blackish purple-green plumage that changes in the fall into light-colored buff and white tipped feathers with a bill that turns bright yellow. Starlings where introduced to New York City in 1890, and as the story goes, someone had decided to introduce all the birds that where mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. But welcomed or not they are here to stay, just like the House Finches, and the House Sparrows, and they all have definitely managed to thrive in this country.
Even though the Starling might be a tuf guy to like when he visits your lovely bird feeding garden, but they do have a beautiful love song, maybe not as musical that of the robins or Wood Thrushes, but are just as enthusiastic as any other spring singer. They are excellent mimics of other bird’s songs, and will even mimic your whistles to call your dog.
Starlings have a vide range of food they consume, such as spiders, Japanese beetles, clover weevils, wasps, ants, bees, and earthworms. When you find them feeding on your lawn you will notice the starling inspecting the ground with frequent, rapid thrusts of their bills. They have swiveling eyes that can both look forward to peer down a hole, but also keep look out for oncoming predators above. Their bills are also equipped with strong muscles that force the bill open at every probe.
Fruits form trees, and shrubs like pears, apples, and cherries are especially attractive to the starling, and their fruit consumption makes up for about 70% of their diet. They are also very important dispersers of invasive trees, and shrubs.
You can find them all over North America and as far north as trees grows, and will flock in large numbers in to the thousands, and will often roost, and flock with other birds like grackles, robins, cowbirds, and blackbirds. They are known to sometimes nest in loose colonies, but more often you will find these social birds nest by them selves.
They will build nests in tree cavity or in a crevice of a building, where the male will defend a small territory around it. They are also quick to take over holes made by flickers, and will readily wait for a woodpecker excavating work to be finished, and then steel the nest, right under the unsuspecting woodpecker’s nose (beak). The male will collect most of the building materials, and the female will line the nest with fine grass and feathers.
If you like to attract the European Starling to your lovely bird feeding garden, plant berry-producing shrubs, and fruit producing trees, especially cherry, and pears. Fill your hoppers and bird tables with millet and bread, for cheaper choices you can put out dry dog food, if you have a lot of starlings visiting your feeding stations. They also like suet, but if you find them hogging the suet feeder, the only choice you have is to put out more feeders so the other birds will have a chance to feed too.
