To Sing, Perchance to Talk: Starlings Can Talk
The starling is a common but invasive specie of bird to North America. Gregarious and voracious, they are often considered to be unwelcome pests. But they have their beauty, their purpose. And did you know that they mimic the sounds around them, and that they can be taught to mimic human speech patterns the same as a myna bird? A talking Starling.
The Common Starling of North America
The common Starling is an invasive bird, introduced to North America in the 1890s by one Eugene Schiefflin whom took the notion upon himself to introduce all the birds mentioned in plays by William Shakespeare to the New World. Starlings received a brief mention in the Shakespeare play “Henry IV”. Scheifflan had released some 60 of these non-native birds in New York City’s Central Park, thus starting their propagation of North America. Starlings compete with local birds (bluebirds, woodpeckers, etc.) for available nesting holes in trees, and aggressively so, forcing natives to vacate existing holes or to just locate elsewhere. This has lead to a decline in local populations of the ‘native’ species and adding to the disdain of the foreign invader specie.
Another introduced specie is the House Sparrow from Europe, brought to North America to appease the immigrants whom fool heartedly wished to see birds from their native homeland in the Americas.
While the introduction of non-native species is generally viewed as a crime today, I personally enjoy Starlings. Their numbers, their noise. Their gregariousness. Starlings have very little fear of people if they think they can receive free food. And they are beautiful to look at.
Starlings are a very successful immigrant to North America, those 60 released birds have turned into hundreds of thousands of Starlings. They have done very well in the New World.
A Nesting Starling
During mating and nesting season, A Starling’s feather coloration can change, their beaks also change from black to yellow sometimes. Their feathers can become glossier, iridescent. I think they are just absolute gorgeous!
Starlings have a rather amazing range of voice vocalization ability, often imitating sounds from around them. These sounds can include the sounds of a baby crying, a phone ringing, car theft alarms, sirens, buzzers, and so forth. Starlings can even recognize the voice of specific individuals, and are a subject of research into how human speech might have evolved.
There Is Strength in Numbers
Starlings have strong tenacious feet and when they fly, their flight is direct and straight. These gregarious birds often flock together. Omnivores, they will consume both fruits and insects. They do a particular ‘open-bill probing’ when threshing dense vegetation in search of insects. Any insect that happens to fall within grasp becomes prey! They are notorious for picking through open garbage cans, seeking edible scrapes of anything.
It is their flocking tenancies and taste for ripe fruit that make them reviled by fruits farms, where starlings can strip raspberry, cherry and other commercially grown fruits otherwise intended for humans. Many complain of their loud voices when in these communal flocks. If you have ever seen starlings in the thousands flocking in the early evening sky, you forget all of that and just enjoy their presence, this black cloud of birds. It becomes a joy to witness so many animals moving together in unison, in beauty.
Pretty Bird!
Owing to their innate ability to mimic complex audio patterns, -Starlings can be taught to repeat human speech? Yes! They can be taught speech and it is admittedly a bit unnerving to hear a starling ‘talk back’ to you! But how wonderful is that! They can be taught to speak, just like a Myna bird! Maybe not as precisely as a Myna bird, but they can speak!
Because Starlings are a ‘introduced specie’ of bird, they are not covered by North American song bird protection legislation, meaning that you can legally OWN one as a pet! I am not advocating robbing a nest here, but if one ’should happen to fall from the nest’ and is raised as a domestic, it can be kept. It can probably be taught to speak fairly easily.
Raised in captivity, they can be rather friendly and will sit upon your hand, accept food from you and so forth.
What To Say in Social Situations
Someday, I’d like to ‘rescue’ (nudge-nudge wink-wink) a Starling juvenile, raise it as domestic and teach it how to talk. What would I teach it to say? Oh, I don’t know… maybe something funny like “Birds can’t talk!” and “Here kitty-kitty-kitty!” for starters…
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4 Responses to “To Sing, Perchance to Talk: Starlings Can Talk”
On November 16, 2008 at 3:54 am
If I had this bird I could have asked it to mimic this for you
:)
“Superb Article”
On November 16, 2008 at 3:58 am
The first photo’s amazing. I hope you raise one to read Shakespere. Great stuff. j
On November 17, 2008 at 8:52 am
Unique birds!
On June 8, 2009 at 1:11 pm
We found a baby one in our back yard believe that our puppy killed the momma and took the baby to the wildlife rescue, now i found 2 maybe more in the nest on our roof.
Poor little things
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