The
starlings have increased so fast in this limited region since their first
permanent settlement in Central Park about 1890 that farmers and suburban
dwellers have feared that they might become as undesirable citizens as some
other Europeans -- the brown rat, the house mouse, and the English sparrow.
But a very thorough investigation conducted by the United States Bureau of
Biological Survey (Bulletin No. 868, 1921) is most reassuring in its results.
Let us first state the case for the prosecution: (1) the starling must plead
guilty to a fondness for cultivated cherries; (2) he is often a persecutor of
native birds, like the bluebird and flicker; (3) his roosts, where he
sometimes congregates in thousands in the autumn, are apt to become public
nuisances, offensive alike to the eye, the nose and the ear.
But these offences are not so very serious after all. He does not eat so many
cherries as our old friend the robin, though his depredations are more
conspicuous, for whereas the robins in ones and twos will pilfer steadily from
many trees for many days without attracting notice, a crowd of starlings is
occasionally observed to descend en masse upon a single tree and strip it in a
few hours. Naturally such high-handed procedure is observed by many and deeply
resented by the owner of the tree, who suffers the steady but less spectacular
raids of the robins without serious disquiet,
Less can be said in defense of the starling's scandalous treatment of some
native birds.
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