Beautiful Intruder

Sturnus Vulgaris, the Common Starling, is a funny bird, awkward on the ground, irritating of voice, chittering and squawking unendingly, always seeming to strut about demanding attention. There’s a whole flock of them usually roosting in a billboard at 145^th & Aurora or in one or more trees nearby.

Recently the bird has been on the news, all over Facebook, and spread widely around the web. Perhaps you’ve seen the video of that huge flock of them wheeling and swooping together over a river in Ireland. So beautiful, so mesmerizing. Amazing stuff. These Irish natives are about as beautiful as any creature when they fly, except for one big thing: They’re all around us, but they’re not native here.

They nest in holes and are highly aggressive. They will forcibly evict current residents, killing them or their chicks if necessary, and they eat massive amounts of food- mostly insects. Their expansion across the continent has been accompanied by losses in woodpeckers, swallows, martins, and other hole-nesters. Talk about invasive!

They were introduced to North America in 1890 by a group which thought we barbarians would be edified and enriched if we could be in contact with all the birds Shakespeare had written into his plays and poetry. That’s probably the strangest reason I’ve ever heard to introduce a critter! Most plants and animals have been introduced for food or game or medicine, or as garden exotics, or by accident, or by negligent disposal (releasing a fish or turtle or whatever into the wild) or to attempt to undo a previous mistake.

The mongoose, for instance, was introduced to Hawai’i to hunt Norway rats. The rats had been introduced inadvertently, escaping from sailing ships as they arrived. They did huge damage to the sugar cane and fruit crops. A planter got the bright idea that if he could just introduce Indian mongooses they would eat the rats and all would be good…

“There was an old lady who swallowed a dog. She swallowed the dog to catch the cat. She swallowed the cat to catch…” You know where this is going, right? Mongooses are diurnal- active during the day. Rats are nocturnal- active during the night. Oh, and mongooses aren’t rodent specialists. Since there were few rats out when the mongooses were hunting they took native birds instead, and everything else, too, and in the process took over most of the islands.

I talked about this in and   but it’s not just us and Hawai’i. Every region has its own problems, and it’s not black and white.

From a local biological diversity perspective a starling- any invasive species- is bad news. It changes things in ways that may disadvantage or kill off native species.  From a long-term perspective maybe an invasive can be seen as just a normal part of life’s changes. The Cattle Egret, for instance, apparently flew or blew all the way into South America from Africa! Now you can find them as far north as Southern Alaska! From a philosophical perspective one may argue any living thing is as worthy of survival as any other, so it would be wrong to eliminate a creature from any place it has established itself. I tend to place more importance on the diversity end of things, but all of those perspectives bring trouble for the status quo.

You see, the biggest, most successful, most destructive alien invasive species of them all is, well, currently reading this article. It’s about what we do- digging, filling, burning, clearing, paving, fencing, sprawling, poisoning- but it’s also about how much of it we do, and that all comes inevitably down to how many of us there are. See? Uncomfortable. We need to get green as fast as we can, no matter the cost, and that really does mean reducing our overall species impact worldwide. The consequences of failure are really bad, and none of us should want to inflict them on our descendants. I figure the Duggars should name their twentieth child… Hmm. I don’t know a ‘j’ word which means “grossly selfish”. Oh well, I'm sure they'll come up with something.