To be honest, I love and hate staring at the same time. They do eat a LOT of garden pests, and I love to watch them waddling across the yard, picking grubs, etc. out the grass. They are very good parents, as birds go. The bad side; their nests are very messy, they sit in large flocks on low wires and poop on everything, and they can invade nesting boxes set out for other bird species.

How about they are not from the America's and they have invaded the 48 states?

"invasive" or "not native" is a pretty tough idea in some respects. First, you kind of have to draw a hard line, temporally, and say, "anything that ain't here now will be labeled as such then". In other words, in 1,000 years, will Starlings be "indigenous" to the States? 10,000 years? If not by then, when? And how would one know? (The fossil record being what it is - absence of evidence not being evidence of absence and all that...)

The second thing is that ecosystems tend to, themselves, adapt. Find an equilibrium. Often at the cost of the "indigenous", to be sure, but that's a lot of what nature's about. (One of the inferences being that if equilibrium is re-established and you yoink the "invasive", what then?)

So I'm a little more fatalistic than most, probably. Migration and invasion and all else has happened since the beginning of life - and will continue long after I'm gone. Part of the dance. I keep finding things to enjoy about it.

BigBill said:The Starling with the white spots is their winter plumage. Youngsters are a plain gray color. They can often be seen following the adults around squawking to be fed.

I think of them as "Winged Vermin"!

I believe they are or were a major pest in the UK. If I remember correctly Michael Caine, the actor, when he was a kid growing up, helped support his family by shooting & collecting the bounty on them that existed at that time.
How did I come across this information? My hubby is an avid reader & this was in either a biography or auto biography of Michael Caine.

Around 1900, the Shakespeare Club in New York City decided that every bird that was ever mentioned in the works of Shakespeare should be in the United States. Or more to the point I think it was Central Park, Manhattan.
So the Starling, and others, were brought to this country.
The State Bird of New York was the bluebird, but the spreading population of Starling pushed the Bluebirds to the brink. They out completed the Bluebirds for nesting sites, primarily in tree cavities. The Bluebird population has struggled ever since. That is why I consider them invaders.
In a similar environmental disaster, the Gypsy Moth was brought to the NE United States as a substitute for the silkworm. The "silk" produced by the Gypsy moth was not desirable at all and in the meantime they escaped which led to the massive deforestation of the NE over the last 50-60 years or so. Silly ideas leading to environmental disasters. Some things are better left where they started instead of humans trying to "improve things".
Don't get me started on the English Sparrow which isn't a Sparrow at all but a 'Weaver finch'.
Starlings will never be considered indigenous to the US, they are indigenous to Europe. In my mind you can't be declared a native species because you have become a nuisance enough to warrant that designation.

Ask Florida about invasive species. Australian pine, melaleuca, Mexican poppy, Brazilian pepper, Nile monitors, Burmese Pythons!The python just might be the worse environmental disaster of all time!
Heaven help the southern United States if they ever make it out of Florida. Native wildlife from Texas to Georgia will be on the pythons menu!

I love to laugh. I am a firm believer that a laugh a day helps keep the doctor away. Also, if you can't laugh at yourself, you're in really bad shape.

I'm going through photos that have been sitting in my camera until today.


I could not resist titling this one........

Republicans & Democrats

I hesitate to touch this sensitive subject (invasive species),except to say that ALL who have posted here have important facts and opinions on this very touchy subject. I recently got into an e Mail war with a very vehement Master Gardener member who told me under no uncertain terms should invasive plants be allowed for our upcoming plant sale. She then proceeded to tell me exactly which plants were invasive. I told her, politely but firmly, that as chair of the sale it was my final decision as to which plants were accepted for the sale, thank you very much, and that ANY plant could be considered to be an invasive with certain conditions; those being soil, horticultural practices, weather, etc. Same could be said for animals. It depends. Does that mean that ALL plants and animals not indigenous to the U.S. are invasive? Once again, it depends. What is the true meaning of the word invasive? Bill made a clear case for the destructiveness of certain species. Asa also made a very succinct observation about the mechanics of nature and the natural world at work( when we don't try to change it). My opinion is, when it gets right down to it, is that we have to measure what the ultimate effects of what the plant/ animal produce when they are introduced to a new area where they have no natural predators to keep them at bay. You only have to look at Australia to see what has happened there. Rabbits foe example, or hogs throughout the Southern Pacific islands. That is why we have laws here to ban the importation of certain species, such as mongoose.

I sure wasn't advocating intentional introduction. But more observing systems - their dynamic and almost (shouldn't be mapping this on) thoughtful push toward balance. Irrespective of their contents.

I'm no fan of pythons and iguanas and monitors (for example) in the Everglades (and Florida more broadly). Stupid, stupid people. But I also know that were we to look at those systems in, say, 1,000 years, we'd see a "normal" that we could understand and explain - without having to use the word "non-indigenous". In other words, the only reason we'd assert that things were "out of whack" and a "disaster" then is because some (then) historian told us it was. We'd not know by observation.

Nature's such a dynamic beast. Heck, only ten thousand years ago (a mere blink of the eye by most natural measure), where I live this place was rife with mega fauna - and a pretty different regime of plants. So my question was, mostly, at what point do I call what's here now "normal". I find it hard to lament and easier to revel in observing getting things figured out in a (changed) way in which a (new) balance is found. None of my hand-wringing will bring back the short-faced bear...but I can enjoy that (500-year-old) herd of mustangs out on the desert.

Didn't meant to step on toes nor open a can of worms. Mostly just wonder at the magnificence of Nature finding and re-finding equilibria - irrespective of what ends up where at any given moment. Pull back, in awe, from our "three-score-and-ten" and marvel.

Asa, you didn't step on toes, especially mine, and you didn't open a can of worms because that has can has been open for some time and the worms are escaping! What you posted was your thoughtful, logical explanation of how some people feel about this sizzling issue, and I for, one agree with many aspects of your discourse. In any case, there is simply not enough long term scientific study done on many non native species brought in to the country to determine whether they WILL become invasive, or whether their importation will prove detrimental to our already fragile ecosystem.
On to another subject... xerxes just released official reports on Western Monrarchs; 29,000 in the last year, 2,000 up from the previous year, but in overall population counts of many years of counts, still in decline. No official reports regarding Eastern Monarchs; Mexico states increases at the Eastern wintering grounds, but this not official information. Chief causes for declines listed as the lack of milkweed, pesticides, and no big surprise to me, they listed climate change this year, stating that climate change has greatly affected the times and actual migration route changes, especially in the spring migration routes returning from the wintering areas. I noticed a significant route change in my own area for the Easterns traveling to Mexico in the fall, and I was dismissed and poo pooed by nearly everyone I talked to about it.

In related news: a couple of years ago, while on a hike with the dogs near our house, we ran across a guy pulling up some yellow, flowering things and tossing them into the brush. He informed us that the weed/flower was "noxic and evasive" and he was just doing his part.

"Noxic and evasive", as a phrase, is part of our (abused) lexicon now. Fitting description for the more annoying parts of life....

During my 29 August Walk/"Patrol" in the Lehigh Parkway, I was fortunate enough to photograph one of the Great Blue Herons (which I have nicknamed JR) catch a rather large Brown Trout. The whole incident lasted a bit over three minutes. I have documented it in a video slide show, of about the same duration, which can be viewed with the following Dropbox File link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ew53...

Some viewers may find parts of the slide show disturbing.

Robert, I watched and was awed by the quality of the video. Doing this as a slide show made this much more dramatic and highlighted the struggles of prey species. So often what we see in real time is so quick we don't have any real impression of the connection between they prey and the predator. Disturbing? Yes, but something I think needs to be seen.

That is a sizable fish! The circle of life. It happens. I did start feeling sorry for the fish after it managed to escape a few times but this is the way of nature.

Excellent slide show Robert & it's good you gave a warning.

What a cool Video, Robert ... nature at it's best!! It always amazes me to see Herons catch and eat such large fish!

Roughie in flight from today:

Very nice Asa!!!

Here's another from yesterday:

Beautiful bird in flight. Supposed to be good weather today. Hope to get to the lake to try to take some pics.

Oooh, I love those in flight shots ... especially that second one!!