Starling flocks can help farms and wreck them
Sturnus vulgaris, the common or European starling, breeds across temperate Europe and the wider Palearctic with about twelve subspecies. Huge flocks eat insect pests yet also raid crops and, since the 1980s, have declined where grassland invertebrates vanished from fields.
In Britain and Ireland people just say starling; North Americans specify European starling for the introduced bird. Linnaeus named it in 1758 with the binomial still used; both Sturnus and vulgaris are Latin roots pointing to a commonplace starling. The Old English staer and Latin sturnus both come from an unknown Indo-European root imitating the bird's call.
About 20 centimetres long and 58 to 101 grams, it wears glossy black plumage with a metallic sheen, speckled white in some seasons. It walks or runs rather than hops, and enlarged jaw-opening muscles on a narrow skull let it probe the soil and prise its bill open to feed. Flocks lift off almost together and wheel in unison. Males are the main singers, running minute-long bouts built from four song types in fixed order, and older males command wider repertoires.
Its large flocks help farmers by eating invertebrate pests yet damage fruit and sprouting crops, and big urban roosts bring noise and mess. People have carried it to Fiji, South Africa, Argentina, Mexico, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and in those places it counts as invasive. In parts of northern and western Europe numbers have fallen since the 1980s as grassland invertebrates for chicks became scarce, but the global population is so huge that the IUCN still lists it as least concern. Its closest relative is the spotless starling of Iberia and north-west Africa.
Source: Common starling
