starling: a wikipedia poem
Starling on Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine (perching) birds known for the often dark, glossy iridescent sheen of their plumage; their complex vocalizations including mimicking; and their distinctive, often elaborate swarming behavior, known as murmuration.
I think often of your habit of porch-sitting, of observing, like you're perched and in contemplation.
Several European and Asian species have been introduced to these areas, as well as North America, Hawaii, and New Zealand, where they generally compete for habitats with native birds and are considered to be invasive species.
A haunting of your ancestry, your job essentially makes you a migratory bird, and it's the movement and the flock that's the native environment rather than the land.
Many species search for prey such as grubs by "open-bill probing", that is, forcefully opening the bill after inserting it into a crevice, thus expanding the hole and exposing the prey; this behaviour is referred to by the German verb zirkeln (pronounced [ˈtsɪʁkl̩n]).
If you make a hole and find that your hole is someone else's presence there comes an understanding of wholeness, not in absentia. You trace the circle, you draw it, you coax out presence out of the absence.
Starlings have diverse and complex vocalizations and have been known to embed sounds from their surroundings into their own calls, including car alarms and human speech patterns. The birds can recognize particular individuals by their calls and are the subject of research into the evolution of human language.
I associate you with mockingbirds and songbirds of mimicry; I like to associate this part with the sharing of knowledge and also of play, like clowns, like joker cards.
The longest species in the family is the white-necked myna (Streptocitta albicollis), which can measure up to 50 cm (19+1⁄2 in), although around 60% in this magpie-like species is comprised by its very long tail.
I, too, have the capacity to perch, but I'm always yapping a call or looking for a gleam to peck at and hoard. Did you know that sometimes wanting to eat things that aren't food is called "pica", casually? It's also the name of the magpie's genus.
Less sexual dimorphism is seen in plumage, but with only 25 species showing such differences between the two sexes. The plumage of the starling is often brightly coloured due to iridescence; this colour is derived from the structure of the feathers, not from any pigment.
Butch: It's not the color you paint them that makes them shine, it's the way they're built when the light hits them.
Other ornamentation includes elongated tail feathers and brightly coloured bare areas on the face.
Costume and masks that you'd assume are not masks because they're bare, but they're just as bright and ornamental as the feathers on the tail. The world's a stage.
The genus Aplonis has also spread widely across the islands of the Pacific, reaching Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia (in addition one species in the genus Mino as reached the Solomon Islands. Also, a species of this genus is the only starling found in northern Australia.
From madanā, the 36 heroes and daimons of the realm of joy/excitement in the knowledge layer of the mandala of Heruka in Tibetan buddhism; their faces are a reflection of their names.
Some species of starlings are migratory, either entirely, like Shelley's starling, (...) or like the white-shouldered starling, which is migratory in part of its range, but is resident in others.
Indirectly named after the poet, which is neat, and thus also indirectly related to Frankenstein, which is neater.
A persistent story alleges that Eugene Schieffelin, chairman of the American Acclimatization Society, decided all birds mentioned by William Shakespeare should be in North America, leading to the introduction of the starling to the U.S.; however, this claim is more fiction than fact (...) Schieffelin and other members of the society did release starlings in Central Park.
The reason why it's more fiction than fact is, most certainly, that Central Park isn't real.
A highly social bird, most starlings associate in flocks of varying sizes throughout the year.
A production is a swarm is a flock is a temporary association that is capable of improvisation.
The sharp pushing, pulling, diving, pulsating and swooping of the flock in response to the individual movements may confuse and discourage predators such as falcons, providing a collective protection. The term murmuration derives from the low, indistinct sounds of a dense flock's wings — i.e., the murmor.
Murmor or murmur is onomatopoeic in all its etymologies, but in Ancient Greek, i have seen it used to describe the roaring of the waves at sea, their crashing.
Researchers used a computer simulation to determine that each bird synchronized with its seven closest neighbors, creating overlapping groups that communicated their movements — focusing on three simple parameters: attraction, repulsion and angular alignment.
A Pi never gives up.
In Denmark, where murmurations have been estimated to involve a million starlings, the phenomenon is called the Black Sun, or Sort sol in Danish.
Ouroboros, almost, an eclipse, but it is no sun nor is it self devouring: It's a coming together of species to make art as motion, like a loom, like a dance, like sound waves.
Starlings imitate a variety of avian species and have a repertoire of about 15–20 distinct imitations. They also imitate a few sounds other than those of wild birds. The calls of abundant species or calls that are simple in frequency structure and show little amplitude modulation are preferentially imitated. Dialects of mimicked sounds can be local.
Sometimes you want to learn languages for the way they make you think, not the way they let you sound.
The Starling's sociality is particularly evident in their roosting behavior; in the nonbreeding season, some roosts can number in the thousands.
I just want to find a friend, I don't need another lover. This is love without lovers.
Robins and starlings cause serious damage to ripening grapes in California and elsewhere.
I've been looking at bird names for a while now, and I kept circling back to Robin, because a beloved friend is called that and it's one of the few names that are recognizable in English and also a literal bird.
Starlings have been observed feeding on fermenting over-ripe fruit, which led to the speculation that they might become intoxicated by the alcohol.
My cotton-headed wine connoisseur.
In addition to consuming fruits, many starlings also consume nectar. The extent to which starlings are important pollinators is unknown, but at least some are, such as the slender-billed starling of alpine East Africa, which pollinates giant lobelias.
Fellow pollinator, but you're not the tragic hero offering the nectar in exchange for a blessing, you take it for yourself. You take the sweetness and the seed, you give light.
The starling family Sturnidae was introduced (as Sturnidia) by French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815.
A lover of the exiled and the migrants, dying of old pica with a plant that lets water slide off of it like duck plumage. I do love mentha s(pica)ta and spades is a beautiful suit, even when death haunts it.
The starlings belong to the superfamily Muscicapoidea, together with thrushes, flycatchers and chats, as well as dippers, which are quite distant relatives, and Mimidae (thrashers and mockingbirds). The latter are apparently the Sturnidae's closest living relatives, replace them in the Americas, and have a rather similar but more solitary lifestyle. They are morphologically quite similar too—a partly albinistic specimen of a mimid, mislabelled as to suggest an Old World origin, was for many decades believed to represent an extinct starling (see Rodrigues starling for details).
Scavenger and mimic of the dead-eyed variety (not really, but let's bungle some etymologies).
Usually, the starlings are considered a family, as is done here.
It doesn't matter if the cross-species reproduction gives a negative, they share enough to be family.
As the fossil record is limited to quite Recent forms, the proposed Early Miocene (about 25–20 Mya) divergence dates for the "sturnoids" lineages must be considered extremely tentative. Given the overall evidence for the origin of most Passeri families in the first half of the Miocene, it appears to be not too far off the mark, however.
We may not share our genes but we share something far more important: Starlings became distinct at the same time as hominids from apes.
As of 2007, recent studies identified two major clades of this family, corresponding to the generally drab, often striped, largish "atypical mynas" and other mainly Asian-Pacific lineages, and the often smaller, sometimes highly apomorphic taxa which are most common in Africa and the Palearctic, usually have metallic coloration, and in a number of species also bright carotinoid plumage colors on the underside.
Apomorphic is not aposematic. In birds bright markings are a sign of individuation, but in reptiles and amphibians they're a sign of danger. And yet, aposematism can be considered a protective type of mimicry.
The Philippine creepers, a single genus of three species of treecreeper-like birds, appear to be highly apomorphic members of the more initial radiation of the Sturnidae. (:..) Nonetheless, their inclusion in the Sturnidae is not entirely final and eventually, they may remain a separate family.
Or perhaps fear and protection, individuality and flocking, are not that different, since one of the first branches that split from that tree may remain separate.
Grosbeak starling (S. dubium)
You: The doubter.
Chestnut-tailed starling (S. malabarica)
You: The juggler.
Madagascar starling (H. auratus)
You: Illuminated in gold.
Pied starling (L. bicolor)
You: in technicolor hues invisible to the naked eye.
Socotra starling (O. frater)
You: Brother and fruit-eater.
Speculipastor
You: A mirror, a shepherd.
Magpie starling (S. bicolor)
You: Kindred.