Birds
Common Starling
Sturnus vulgaris · also called European starling, English starling
The common starling is two birds at once: a small iridescent songbird with a gift for imitation, and one of the world’s most successful invaders, spread by people across four continents. In its native Europe it is now in trouble; almost everywhere else it is a runaway success.
Overview
Sturnus vulgaris is native to Eurasia and North Africa and introduced widely elsewhere. It is about 20 cm long, glossy black shot with green and purple, and spangled with white spots in winter that wear off by spring as the bill turns yellow. It eats insects and worms in the warm months and fruit and grain in winter.
The wheeling flocks
Before roosting, starlings form murmurations — clouds of thousands turning as one. Each bird tracks only its handful of nearest neighbours, and that simple local rule produces the coordinated whole, thought to confuse predators and share information.
The mimic
Its song is a long ramble stitched with imitations of other birds, alarms, and machinery. Mozart kept one as a pet.
The American population
About 100 birds released in New York’s Central Park in 1890–91 have become a population in the hundreds of millions, out-competing native cavity nesters and damaging crops.
Status
Globally Least Concern but decreasing — down roughly 80% in Britain since the 1960s, even as the introduced flocks stay enormous.
Common Starling: common questions
How do starling murmurations work?
There is no leader and no plan. Each starling watches roughly its six or seven closest neighbours and adjusts its speed and direction to stay aligned with them and at a set distance, turning when they turn. Because every bird follows the same simple rule, a change started by a few birds on one edge, often a reaction to a hunting falcon, sweeps through the whole flock in a fraction of a second as a rippling wave. The result is the dense, fluid, ever-changing shapes seen over winter roosts. The behaviour is thought to confuse predators, share warmth, and pass on information about good feeding sites.
Did Shakespeare really cause starlings to be introduced to America?
The popular version says a man named Eugene Schieffelin released starlings in Central Park in 1890 because he wanted every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's plays to live in America, the starling appearing once in Henry IV. Schieffelin did organise the releases as part of an acclimatisation society that imported many European species. But historians have found the Shakespeare motive was added later and rests on thin evidence; the societies were introducing all sorts of birds for familiarity and perceived usefulness. The releases happened; the tidy literary reason is mostly a myth.
Why are starlings a problem in North America?
Two reasons. They compete aggressively for nest holes, and being larger and bolder than many native cavity nesters they take over sites from bluebirds, tree swallows, purple martins, and small woodpeckers, reducing breeding success for those species. And they gather in enormous flocks that descend on fruit crops, cattle feedlots, and grain stores, causing agricultural losses and fouling, and their roosts near airports are a bird-strike hazard. Because the species is not protected in the United States, large-scale control is carried out.
Is the common starling actually declining?
Yes, across much of its native range, which surprises people who see huge flocks. In the United Kingdom the breeding population has fallen by around 80 percent since the late 1960s, and there have been steep declines in several other European countries, enough for the species to be placed on national red lists. The likely causes are the loss of permanent pasture and the insects it holds, which hits the survival of chicks and young birds. The global total stays large only because the introduced populations elsewhere are so big.