The author Mike Stark by writing his new book on the stars

The starlings are in North America because they were invited here almost 140 years ago. The simple story is that a worldly manhattan named Eugene Schieffelin imported nearly 200 starches in the European cage and released them to Central Park between 1889 and 1891. During the decades that followed, they ran through the continent, swirling Platonys of strong and naufrometric in a land without fault. It went well for the Starlings, who are excellent obstinate adapters and survivors, and their ranks from one ocean to another increased to some 200 million. Today, however, consensus among so many human neighbors – Cornithologists, bird observers, farmers, airport managers and buildings maintenance teams – is that these 3 ounce birds are classified somewhere between a low grade pest and a waking nightmare.

The question has been posed repeatedly to Schieffelin: what is it divided into in the world?

Unlike popular tradition, Schieffelin did not try to bring to America each bird never mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. This story has been demystified, but the seeds of the occupation of the starlings were planted in an also wrong concept, at least of our 21st century gaze. Schieffelin was not only a bird lover, but a man of his time – and at the time the movement of “acclimatization” had settled in pockets of the whole world. The essential idea was that nature had not been perfected until the human hand made its contribution – in particular the import of animals and plants from other land to be used as a cattle, hunting career, food or decoration. In America, the concept was widely expressed by birds. People who had recently arrived aspired in their lives at home, especially those appreciated as insect eaters or trille singers. Skylarks, Wrens, Finches and Chrushes arrived in cages and were released throughout the country, either via formal acclimatization companies, or people acting alone. Schieffelin’s American Society acclimatization in New York has done its part. Most released birds have not survived long. Among the most notable exceptions, there were sparrows and starlings.

But if Schieffelin or someone else in his camp had taken the trouble to consider the wisdom of bringing foreign species to America, they would have been well served by a trip below. Rabbits had been imported into Australia and New Zealand at the start of this century to give Europeans something to hunt. Rabbits have raised themselves as, well, rabbits and things fell out of control. New Zealand called on stoa, cats and other hunters to deal with rabbits. As you would expect, they also became uncontrollable, soon feasting on native birds. Similar examples abound during the last century, including famous in Hawaii, where mangoes were brought to witness rats and places like Puerto Rico or Australia, where cane toads imported released in the hope of controlling insects. Some 37,000 species have been transported (intentionally or not) to new regions in recent centuries, according to the United Nations, and today constitute a serious threat to native fauna, ecosystems, economies and human infrastructure. The cost to try to control invasive and non -native species exceeds $ 420 billion each year.

Here, the US Department of Agriculture estimates that starlings can be the most expensive bird in the country, causing around $ 1 billion in agricultural operations each year. They go from machines, eat crops like wine grapes and cherries, engulfing foods intended for cows and generally make a nuisance. This does not include the cost to clean the sidewalks, have them browse airports or prevent them from perching in the suburban trees or the city buildings. And then there is what the starlings do to native birds, eliminating them from the nests and making their way in food supplies. (Until now, however, there is no evidence of major effects in the population on local birds.)

I guess I cannot blame Schieffelin’s desire for more birds and more bird songs, but nature has a way of making us pay so as not to think. Negligence has a price in a way that we often do not imagine in the moment.

No sooner were the stars here that many people wanted them to go out. Easier to say than to do.

Our war forever against starlings during the last century presented all kinds of human ingenuity and despair, each effort aimed either to kill these birds or to drive them out to make them the problem of someone else. Over the years, we have tried dynamite, Roman candles, false owls, electrified cages, balloons, whips, teddy bear and dirty layers in trees. We have turned off poisoned bait and flag perches cut with chemicals to strip their feathers of heat retention oils. The construction edges were covered with fat, hunting rifles pulled in the trees, fire pipes trained on incriminated herds. We have deployed noise cannons and castigated stove recordings in distress. They were driven out in the church steeples, awakened from banks and pursued by men of entrepreneurial birds promising miracle results at an affordable price.

How can there be bad guys in nature, including something so charming and fully achieved as a busty?

No species has been targeted more often by the Nuisité-Wildlife agency of the federal government than starlings. My crew revealed that between 2008 and 2022, the agency killed around 18.5 million starlings, more than one million per year and more than 3,000 every day on average. During this same period, they driven around 29,000 setbacks a day.

And for all efforts, starlings are always everywhere. They are intelligent, adaptable, reproduce quickly and are one of the great survivors of nature. More often than not, the harassment of starlings generally moves them somewhere, either in the next city block or another farm on the road. Eradication? Good luck. “It’s a bit like giving up the ocean with a tear,” said a biologist.

Writing the story of a species – even as new in North America as the Starling – is a thorny affair. There are, of course, linear aspects of this story. The bird arrives, spreads and irritates. A villain is sunk and the heroes try to correct a wrong. If you fold your eyes long enough, there is a simple and easy to explain arc.

But linger and the complexities emerge. How can there be bad guys in nature, including something so charming and fully achieved as a busty? And this man who released them, Schieffelin, he loved birds. Was he really a fool to blame more? And suppose that the starlings propel the evolution of some of our native species in a way that makes them more adaptable to the world that we change so recklessly around them? What if there is more to the starlings, past and future than we know?

Go further: who decides what is a worthy species and what is not? Who decides who belongs to this continent and who does not do it? How long to become a citizen? And does our calculation change over time?

I will not pretend to have the answers, but I know that starlings raise a lot of questions and lead us in the alleys that we may want to avoid. On the one hand, I find it hard to reconcile that the bird that we kill and harass with so much enthusiasm is the same whose whispering whispers in the sky inspire art, leave so much wonder and led the ancient Romans to analyze their changing forms in search of divine messages. In addition, I am worried about the sky that empties all around us, a deep loss of birds that makes this place more lonely day by day. Do we really want to take more? The list continues.

The truth, all the truth, if such a thing exists, resists reductions, reveals mysteries and shoots to our beliefs when we fight to become more human. Any story – whether natural, political or personal – is never over and never finished, and we should be happy for that. There are always revelations to have and paradoxes to explore on ourselves and even birds outside our windows while waiting to be seen.

Read an adapted extract from Mike Stark’s book Stardings: the curious odyssey of a most hated bird here.

Lead photo by Somni4uk / Shutterstock

• Mike Stark

  Published on May 12, 2025

  Mike Stark is a journalist and writer based in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of several books, including Chasing the Ghost Bear: on the track of the lost American super beast. You can find out more about his work on Mikestarkwrites.com.

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