Monday, December 5, 2011

The Visitation of the Starlings


The last blog I posted was October 28th...two days before I broke my ankle in New Orleans. HOWEVER, I am going to skip over that story to share the video I shot today.


FarmerChefBuilder Jeff and I started noticing the annual gathering of the starlings over the last few days.Today they came into the backyard, creating a deafening wall of sound. I ran out with the camera and caught some in flight. Enjoy!


A side note about the birds:  European Starlings were Introduced as part of a plan to introduce to the U.S. all birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. They crowd out native birds (bluebirds, titmice, nuthatches, swallows, wrens; sometimes even American kestrels, flickers, acorn woodpeckers) and can destroy crops.  *See National Invasive Species Information Center of the USDA.