" ... even the smallest of the starlings' concerns grew in importance
until it seemed equal to the worries of kings."
-- Christopher Paolini, Inheritance
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| Starling in flowering pear tree 1-10-14 |
"Man generally does not know enough about the cycle of life
to mess with the biological diversity of a region without causing irreparable damage,
the starling is an excellent case in point."
-- Nature Ali
When the cold snap finally broke, Mother Nature released the starlings, and our front yard trees were full of them.
Starlings are not a good thing.
Starlings are nuisance birds.
People hate starlings.
There are entire how-to websites dedicated to eradicating as many starlings as possible. Starlings destroy crops, ruin vineyards, foul animal feed and spread diseases to livestock and other birds. They fly into jet engines and cause airplane crashes which kill people. They nest wherever they damn well please, they're noisy, they shit everywhere. They dominate other bird species. They are called "intelligent killers," the "avian menace," "ugly birds" and "vermin" whose population is growing unabated.
There are hordes of starlings because some d-bag brought a few nesting pair to North America from Europe in 1880.
Dipshit.
The experts say winter is the best time to rub out the starlings because that's when their populations are weakest, and it's before the spring nesting season when they git bizzy and multiply. Anything goes: traps, bb guns and other firearms, tainted bait, strangulation with your bare hands, biting off their heads. Whatever it takes to kill the little bastards.
I can think about cold-blooded murder another day.
On this day, after a stretch of bitter cold that paralyzed the bare, frozen landscape and sent all the creatures running for cover, it was nice to see some signs of life, even if it was a bunch of goddamn starlings.
I shot this guy with my camera from my son's bedroom window. According to the experts, I should have blown it's ugly head off. But I thought he looked pretty and peaceful perched in the flowering pear tree. So I didn't take his life. I took his picture. Which, I'll bet if you asked the starling, was a good thing.
Everybody is beautiful sometimes.
Even goddamn fucking starlings.
