Serge wrote:

> The Starling is considered a pest by farmers in France,
> because in the winter they can damage crops. In Brittany (west
> part of France), they used to roost by millions (yes,
> millions) in a single place, usually a grove.

In the early 1980's the Starling roosts made the UK national news,
regularly. It was estimated that a single roost of 4-5 million birds
was eating at least 8 tons of grain a day !!!!

As far as ways of eradicating them some lessons might be learned
:-) from efforts to control Quaelea finches (spelling might be
wrong) in eastern Africa. They occur in plague proportions - their
breeding biology is geared towards producing as many young as
possible - everything eats them. Normally resident on the shrubby
grasslands then sometimes impinge on farmland and can decimate crops
in hours - avian locusts.

The traditional solution is to find the roost site - birds can
number in the millions. Tie dynamite and cans of gasoline around all
the trees. Then Kaboooom !!!!! A very impressive sight - courtesy
of the BBC Natural History Unit.

I must note that these extreme (?) circumstances are only applied
when crops are at serious risk - no joke in eastern Africa
(Tanzania, etc). Normally the birds pose little threat.

In the UK the National Farmers Union regularly used to organise
Rook shoots, where the tweed-clad gentle-folk of the countryside
would gather at rookeries and blast away till their hearts content -
the result, absolutely no effect on Rook numbers. So I guess if
Starlings are to be reduced then east Africa might be the place to
look. It would certainly beat the use of poison - as the expense of
the trees - planted by humans for the most part. It could be argued
that such a strategy might be more humane ????

Question: If all the Starlings disappeared would they simply be
replaced by Blackbirds, or is their biology different enough that
this would not happen ?

Stuart MacKay