
The Unintended Beauty of Starlings - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/the-unintended-beauty-of-starlings
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waynecochran
Interesting. I grew up understanding that Starlings are a pest species and are
the one song bird that your are allowed to shoot — in fact you are encouraged
to shoot on sight. They are the gang members of the songbird world since they
are hostile to other birds and like to parasitically destroy other birds eggs
and replace them with their own.

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s_dev
Co-incidence, I was just watching this starling murmuration on reddit in
Ireland:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/ffm2l2/murmuration...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/ffm2l2/murmuration_over_nobber_meath/)

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_spduchamp
Starlings are amazing...

They can be taught to speak words...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhBaVInb3jI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhBaVInb3jI)

and check out Brian D Collier's art project Teach the Starlings
[http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm](http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm)

Also, murmurations behave like magnets... "To achieve their extraordinary
coordination, starling flocks in flight behave mathematically like metals
becoming magnetized, researchers say."
[https://www.wired.com/2012/03/starling-flock-
dynamics/](https://www.wired.com/2012/03/starling-flock-dynamics/)

