Hi tweeters,

The old timers on this list have heard my comments about starlings in the
past. To summarize, I think they've been overimplicated in the decline of
many hole-nesting birds, a lot of which happened in western Washington well
before starling numbers had built up. Here's some more info from a
just-published paper (I'll leave it to the sturnophobes to provide
counterevidence).

Vierling, Kerri T. 1998. Interactions between European Starlings and
Lewis' Woodpeckers at nest cativities. J. Field Ornith. 69: 376-379.

ABSTRACT I monitored 59 Lewis' Woodpecker nests in southeastern Colorado
during the 1992 and 1993 breeding seasons in order to determine the
possible impact of competition with European Starlings for nest cativities.
I recorded 73 interspecific interactions during 418 hours of observation.
Out of the 59 breeding LEWO pairs observed, only one lost its nest cavity
to starlings. LEWO were dominant in over 90% of the interspecific
interactions with EUST, and such interactions occurred infrequently (1.7
interactions/10 h of observation). The nesting phenologies of the two
species overlapped minimally because LEWO initiated breeding approximately
4-6 wk after EUST. These data suggest that, at least in southeastern
Colorado, EUST are not major nest-cavity competitors of LEWO, and that
widespread population declines observed in LEWO may be due to other
factors. END ABSTRACT

I think starlings have a bad press in part because *people* don't like them
(who could like those mobs of raucous teen-aged starlings in midsummer?),
but I think we might judge them a bit more generously if we knew more about
them. I've even seen them accused of a sex life characterized by
"inappropriate behavior," but in fact they're more monogamous (and
"faithful," i.e., no extra-pair copulations) than many of our common
songbirds. ;-)

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html