Nobody knows quite how flocks of starlings are able to co-ordinate their flight so perfectly. They come together at dusk and just seem to enjoy themselves in an astonishing team movement. This, initially, was why we thought of starlings when, like, naming the process and site.
Starlings are also very good mimics and can pass themselves off as car alarms and people, as well as other birds. Fanciers in the East End of London used to trap and cage song birds such as starlings and linnets. Each fancier would teach their birds their own ‘julks’ – trills – by whistling. According to this book, Julks had names such as ‘tollick-tollick,’ ‘tug-whizzy’, and ‘tollick, tollick ikki qua.’ The fanciers would bring their best birds together in cages and get them to julk as many times as they all could over a certain period, taking bets on which would last the longest. For a short while, we toyed with a similar betting system on Likestarlings.
Unsurprisingly, given their group flying and song-stealing, we’re not the first and won’t be the last to co-opt starlings for our own ends. I’ve counted four blogs so far that have starling in the name. From Yes, Starlings, Yes!, a like-minded venture in America, I’ve learned this:
all of the European Starlings found today in North America – and they number in the 200 million range – are descendants of approximately 100 birds introduced in New York City’s Central Park in the early 1890s. A society dedicated to introducing into America all of the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare set these birds free.