If lawns of bluegrass and fescue are ecological deserts, no one’s told the starlings. In late autumn, flocks of the birds suddenly appear in my front yard, peck for thirty, maybe forty seconds, then fly off for the lawn across the street. I don’t know what they are finding in the grass, but I assume it’s seed. If it is seed, I wonder if the seeds are from the turf grass or from the weeds I’ve failed to eradicate. I don’t use herbicides, so weed removal is all by hand. This works well with dandelions, gives me a fighting chance with the creeping Charlie and the violets, but is ineffective when it comes to purslane, nutsedge, and crabgrass.
When I was a serious birder, I thought springtime was the best season for watching birds. Now that I am only a casual watcher, I prefer autumn. Opportunities for chance encounters with birds seem more likely in the fall than in the spring. Swans show up on the Upper Mississippi and stay until first ice. Chickadees and blue jays get more active. Less common species of ducks migrate down from the north and join the mallards and wood ducks that have been around all summer. Starlings and robins flock up. Eagles also begin to congregate, but I’d never consider their gatherings a flock. Each eagle maintains its independence and is more or less alone in the crowd. Thanksgiving week Manyu and I usually visit my mom near Green Bay, and we sometimes see hundreds of sandhill cranes as we drive across the state. This year we saw only seven cranes, but in their place were dozens of turkeys.
This morning I am back in La Crosse, and as I sit in my living room window, it is the starlings that have my attention. Even though they are airborne for less than a minute as they flit from yard to yard, it is enough time for me to witness their synchronized flying called murmuration. If I see one or two starlings in my yard, I rank them along English sparrows and cowbirds as some of my least favorite bird species.* When I watch a large flock of starlings fly in coordinated formation, I have to admit that it’s pretty cool.
* My general dislike of starlings, English sparrows, and cowbirds has nothing to do with their boring color. Starlings and English sparrows are non-native species, and brown-headed cowbirds, because they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, are parasites. None of this, I should point out, is logical. Pigeons and pheasants aren’t native, but I have nothing against either species. Cooper’s hawks take out more songbirds than cowbirds, but I like Cooper’s hawks a lot.
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