I'll have a starling shall be taught to sing nothing but 'Mortimer'

~Shakespeare

We have had a flock of starlings haunting our bird feeding station these past few days. Our Song and Garden Birds of North America calls these birds the "aggressive bane of songbirds", but they have not seemed to bother our goldfinches and certainly our resident flicker holds her own. Also from reading we found these birds were first introduced in America in 1890 by a group that planned to introduce all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare into the United States. Certainly they succeeded in the case of the starling, which now covers the entire continent and whose numbers are so high that they endanger air travel and mob feedlots. One way to control them? Southerners have been known to eat them. "Wrap the birds in bacon, spit them, roast in a hot oven, serve on toast."

I think I prefer to simply laugh at their ridiculous antics and pompous strutting. Really, they are quite entertaining.