The starlings are starting to gather in big noisy flocks in the maple tree. They are very social birds, and it sounds like a chaotic discussion up there with everyone talking at once. This must be the "gettin' to know you" period before mating season. You sometimes hear a similar racket coming from the middle school classrooms across the street.
About 60 starling were released in New York's Central Park in 1890 by small group of well-intentioned folks determined to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare. There are now an estimated 150 million Starlings in America. English house sparrows were another gift that keeps on giving. Heaven only knows how many of those call America home.
I've never been lucky enough to see a starling murmuration, when the flock forms this fantastic acrobatic mass before roosting. Scientists don't fully understand how the birds do this. It's easy for a starling to turn when its neighbor turns, but what mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds?
That remains to be discovered.
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