I don't think other blackbird species would replace the starling as an
urban pest generally were it not here, but they would certainly be
agricultural pests. They were here before the starling and knew their
niche. The *big* change for them in the USA was the conversion of the
eastern forests to open fields for agriculture and livestock. The
starlings were not here for that, and my guess is that the native
blackbird populations took off as this conversion progressed. European
man has created the starling-blackbird problem himself by tinkering with
the environment and importing the non-native starling into an ecosystem for
which it is abundantly suited but does not belong.

I recall the advent of starlings in Illinois as a young birder, and
watched with dismay as red-headed woodpeckers and other hole nesters
declined in the face of the starlings' increase. A nest of screech owls
in the maple across the street was an interest of mine, and then one year
the owls were gone and the hole occupied by starlings, whence my intense
dislike of the species.

I broke up a roost of 4-5000 starlings on the university campus in 1975,
(and received fan mail from as far away as Alaska) regretting only that I
had merely dispersed them elsewhere to become somebody else's problem,
e.g., the Ballard Bridge. It is awesome to watch the thousands of them
pour down from the sky at dusk to roost in the understructure, and I am
surprised that they do not cause traffic accidents sometimes. A giant
vacuum cleaner hidden underneath the roadway could probably do wonders,
especially if connected to a dog food factory on the other end.

While they doubtless perform numerous "good" functions, there are far too
many of them, in my opinion. We would do well to protect our ecosystem
against any more such invasive imports; it is unfortunate that only time
will tell whether such species fit into our ecosystem smoothly or
destructively, and I, for one, do not like to gamble when the stakes are
high.