At our house in Hazel Dell (just north of Vancouver, WA), the starlings
would eat at our suet feeders, too. We could go for months without them
and one day they would start. Since we lived in a forested area, we
assumed that they did not particularly like our forested site and so
would not notice except by some accident.

We would then quit filling the suet feeders except for the ones only
open on the bottom. Evidently the starlings were not interested in
hanging upside down just to get to the suet. After a few days we would
fill the others again and have peace from the starlings for another few
weeks or even months. The only time we had regular starlings was one
spring when a pair found a cavity in one of our trees to nest in.

David Barber
Vancouver, WA

Wayne Weber wrote:
>
> Ken and Tweeters,
>
> My experience with Starlings has been that, in general, they don?t use
> feeders much except when the ground is frozen, or when there is snow
> on the ground.
>
> Starlings prefer to feed by probing in the ground (preferably short
> grass) for insect larvae, worms, etc. They do this even in the winter
> as long as the ground isn?t frozen. They also eat a lot of fruit
> whenever it is available.
>
> However, when the ground is frozen (or buried under snow), they have
> great difficulty in using their normal feeding technique. They
> probably spend quite a bit of time systematically looking for feeders,
> and they just happened to find your suet!
>
> For the record?Starling feeding ecology was a large part of my
> master?s thesis, and I actually have quite a lot of data to back up
> some of these statements.
>
> Wayne C. Weber
>
> Delta, BC
>
> contopus at telus.net <mailto:contopus at telus.net>
>
> *From:* tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu
> [mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu] *On Behalf Of *Ken
> and Tina
> *Sent:* December-17-08 9:27 AM
> *To:* tweeters at u.washington.edu
> *Subject:* [Tweeters] Starlings-How do they know?
>
> Hey all,
>
> I put some suet out a couple days ago to help the birds out during
> this cold weather, and within a couple of hours I was feeding the
> starlings. I haven?t seen starlings in my yard for weeks, but they
> seem to be able to smell the suet once it is in my yard. Just an
> observation.
>
> Ken Grant
>
> North Bend WA
>
> kenandtina at comcast.net
>
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