
Even if we don’t love starlings, we should learn to live with them - magda_wang
http://ideas.ted.com/even-if-we-dont-love-starlings-we-should-learn-to-live-with-them/
======
smcl
I had no idea people disliked them. The main thing I knew about Starlings was
their _murmurations_ \- large swarms of them undulating and swirling in the
air. Actually recently a school friend of mine did some sketches of them which
were pretty neat: [https://www.dougieharley.com/single-
post/2017/02/02/Starling...](https://www.dougieharley.com/single-
post/2017/02/02/Starling-Murmuration-series-out-10th-Feb)

~~~
emodendroket
I had the impression they were like sparrows in that they swarm all over food
sources and are in particular a scourge for backyard birding because they'll
kill off the birds you actually want to see (and consume a ton of seed while
they're at it).

~~~
cnnsucks
I have a feeder I put about two pounds of seed in a day. Doves, red-winged
blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, house finches and house sparrows all get
their share. The sparrows aren't "swarming" anyone out. If anything the red-
winged blackbirds are the bullies.

I have a bird house with a pair of sparrows. About 20" above that is a nest of
breeding Robins that like a spot on the underside of my deck. The sparrows
have never messed with the Robin nest in any way. There are eastern bluebirds
nearby and the sparrows have caused no trouble for them either, despite the
suitability of the house.

This "HOSP" hate is misplaced. Please don't hate on these birds. There are a
couple pages on the Internet about the awful depredations of the terrible HOSP
and so hating on them has become a fad.

~~~
emodendroket
I mean, sparrows really do destroy other birds' nests and kill their young.

~~~
cnnsucks
That's just normal bird stuff. Lots of different birds do that.

~~~
emodendroket
Fair enough, but sparrows are so numerous that they can really crowd out all
the others.

~~~
cnnsucks
House sparrows (and purple finches) are actually being crowded out by the
house finch across North America. The house finch competes aggressively for
nesting sites. But it's a pretty little bird so I don't expect any anti-house
finch sites to pop up.

~~~
emodendroket
I can't speak for anyone else but sparrows are far and away the most common
bird I see.

I mean I'll grant that I like looking at blue jays despite them also being
notoriously aggressive.

------
ChuckMcM
On the topic of creating more friendly urban areas for birds, it has been
suggested that making the sides of very tall buildings more amenable to raptor
nesting (falcon, hawk) that not only would it benefit those species it could
help manage pigeon and starling populations.

That said, having had a hawk nesting site near my house there are a lot of
feather piles to deal with :-)

~~~
trhway
some people argue that cats are decimating urban bird population (that is
utter garbage of course), so bringing in more predators (who would hunt much
higher proportion of healthy vs. ill birds than the cats) may not sit well
with such heads.

~~~
exhilaration
_that is utter garbage of course_

I don't have a dog (or cat) in this fight, but I've always heard that cats do
indeed decimate bird populations. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

~~~
YCode
Some cursory Googling seems to reveal this as a controversial talking point.

The most balanced source I found was an NPR article that questioned the
accuracy these claims, but not necessarily the conclusions.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-
we-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-we-really-
know-that-cats-kill-by-the-billions-not-so-fast)

I'm interested to see what sources others might find.

------
rdiddly
I used to be down with trying to restore things to pre-Caucasians-in-North-
America conditions wherever possible. Now upon seeing that that would take
constant and intensive human intervention, and probably still not succeed, I
tend to look more toward post-human conditions as the measuring stick.

If all humans suddenly disappeared or stopped intervening, what would the
landscape look like or turn into? Conditions would prevail that were affected
by everything humans have done to date, but unaffected by any future human
action. So for example, blackberry vines, kudzu, ivy, starlings, rats, and
such, would take over, at least in some places, at least for a while. Is that
bad? If humans disappeared, who would be around to find it bad or good?

Rather than fight it, I have redefined my ideas of "native" and "natural" to
match these conditions. Because that's what "nature" is, right? That which
happens without human intervention? Except of course tons of intervention has
already happened and can't be changed, so the idea is to think about what
would happen if the intervention stopped. Keeping endangered species alive or
fighting invasives might be termed unsustainable and artificial under that
view. I dunno, interesting thought experiment. To me anyway! LOL

~~~
dwighttk
why are humans not part of "nature"?

~~~
rdiddly
Yeah that part is a shaky construct, I agree. Which is kind of what got me
started on this line of thought. The whole idea of 'restoration' that I used
to espouse, rests on getting things back to a "natural" state, meaning a state
without or before humans. So there's your separation right there.

I started thinking like, well too late, humans have been here. But just for
fun let's pretend they instantaneously stopped being here; what would the
"natural," "human-free" world look like then? It would look like what humans
have made it into, plus whatever latent conditions we also caused but might be
holding back by e.g. controlling rat populations or whatnot, plus whatever
areas/systems/ecologies are and were always outside our influence.

~~~
InitialLastName
You might be interested in this book:
[http://www.worldwithoutus.com/about_book.html](http://www.worldwithoutus.com/about_book.html)

It uses both pre-human conditions and conditions in places humans have avoided
(e.g. Chernobyl) to paint a picture of "What if all the humans disappeared all
at once" in both short and long term.

One hot nugget: The lower-NYC subways would flood almost immediately, and the
streets above them would quickly convert into canals (from saltwater erosion),
but the bridges would last longer without maintenance than they would under
normal human use (because the biggest damage to the bridges is from road
salt).

~~~
rdiddly
Wow, he has really carried the idea through. I'll have to check that out,
thanks. Hilariously even the Bill McKibben quote on the cover says "...one of
the greatest thought experiments..."

------
pjc50
I was expecting a mention of Mao:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign)

In the UK, starlings are a protected species..

~~~
kefabean
Exactly, was just going to add that they are red listed as a high conservation
concern in the UK: [https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-
wildlife...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife-
guides/bird-a-z/s/starling/population_conservation.aspx)

------
weatherlight
I had a pet starling as a kid. It fell out of its tree when it was a baby, I
nursed it back to health, it got feathers and at about 1 year it started
mimicking the sound of the doorbell :) All and all, a cool little bird.

------
danschumann
My parents are obsessed birders and just about the only time I hear my mom
swear is regarding a starling. It makes me wonder why there has never been a
general order to hunt as many as possible. If the government paid $4/corpse,
for a time, perhaps we'd be rid of them! (As long as we stopped paying when
people tried breeding then for money, like the cobra)

~~~
mabbo
The day you offer money is the day I start breeding them.

~~~
Tyrannosaur
For those wondering, there is a specific term for this:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

------
wizardforhire
This is one of my favorite art projects. It's goal was to teach starlings to
say Schieffelin. Idk how successful it was.

[http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm](http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm)

------
xutopia
My first thought didn't go to living with them... my thought went towards
eating them.

Little birds tend to be quite tasty and if it is nearly impossible to get rid
of them I'd say would be a nice source of protein.

~~~
fwefwwfe
Do you eat them whole, without the feathers?

~~~
twosville
Maybe blinded, drowned in liquor, and eaten whole:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#Gastronomy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan_bunting#Gastronomy)

~~~
michaelmrose
This is kind of horrifying.

------
towndrunk
Well there is this...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIklqgXi05A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIklqgXi05A)

They are kind of pests on cattle ranches.

------
juiyout
Outside of my office window, there are always groups of them starlings
chatting about. They get extremely noisy.

Not only they chased away much gentler pigeons, interrupted business
negotiations with clients, they managed to pushed one of my designers over the
edge who had a mental break down in the office.

~~~
michaelmrose
Your designer suffers from mental illness. Plenty of people need help. The
causes are as complex as the people and I'm pretty sure the birds didn't make
him/her ill.

