Hi Tweeters,

One of my favorite topics when teaching a class in animal behavior is
mimicry. Starlings were kept as pets in Europe during Mozart's time,
apparently making great pets and as some of you posted recently, these
birds are great mimics. As I am writing this I am listening to Mozart
from a website which may interest you. Here is a quote from that site:

"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was also the delighted owner of a pet
starling. He recorded the purchase of the starling in an expense book,
noting the date, price and a musical fragment the bird was whistling.
The pleasure he expressed at hearing the starling's song--"Das war
schon!" (that was beautiful)--is all the more understandable when one
compares the beginning of the last movement of his Piano Concerto in G
major, K.453, which was written about the same time. Somehow the bird
had learned the theme from Mozart's concerto. It did however sing G
sharp where Mozart had written G natural, giving its rendition a
characteristically off-key sound."

The site is "Starling Talk" at :
http://www.starlingtalk.com/mozart1.htm

As long as the hundreds of millions of these birds are now here why not
enjoy them?

Don McVay
Seattle
dmcvay at cmc.net