Starlings In The Chimney

On Thanksgiving day we had an incredible interruption to a quiet morning when two Starlings came swooping into the office with the dog following in hasty pursuit. I shrieked and yelled for someone else in the house to come and help as the cats started circling the poor confused birds who kept attempting to exit the room through the glass window. No one came and I quickly checked the two front doors (yes, we have two!) and they were both closed which required me to wonder how the hell this tangle could have begun?

Finally my boys came in to help and all of us kept trying to catch the birds before the cats and dog. Some people might have let the carnivores have the birds since they are not a greatly loved species of bird, but I couldn't. Not because I think it would be wrong but because I am one of those few people who love Starlings. I love their calls and how they change their feathers over the course of the season. The come back to the same places to nest every year.

We finally succeeded in catching them by throwing a sweater over one like a net and a dishcloth over the other. One immediately escaped when taken outside but this one I managed to hold onto long enough to tell it how sorry I was for the fright and to tell it how I love its kind and, of course, to snap a couple of pictures.

It then eased out of my grasp like silk and flew off.

The only way it could have entered my house was through the chimney.

I have heard people say that Starlings are aggressively pushing out other native North American bird species and are therefore considered to be nasty little pieces of bird work. When I have expressed my love of them I have received horrified looks in return. Apparently brought here by humans from Europe we are held in account for this invasion and are supposed to find a way to limit their spread to preserve the habitat for the native species.

I can't help but see the parallels between these birds and the Europeans who came to North America on their scourgey boats bringing with them their syphilis and other diseases and killing off with virus and sword nearly all the native North Americans.

So are we suddenly mad for protecting native species of flora and fauna because we realize what awful vermin we, ourselves, are? I can't help but see two sides of this. One is that nature itself sometimes delivers new aggressive species onto the shores of quiet unspoiled lands without the help of human interference. Sometimes in nature it takes aggressiveness and adaptability to survive and if the Starling has it, but some other native birds don't, things shift accordingly in a completely natural way.

Perhaps the same can be said of humans. Perhaps in the natural order of things the humans shift and adjust also. Perhaps it is savage truth that the Europeans who landed here on North American shores have the right of might.

But it can't go both ways. Either Starlings are stronger and more aggressive and therefore have a right to their new habitat, stolen from other weaker species, or they are invasive and need controlling. And whatever the answer is, it must be the same answer for humans. So which is it?

Perhaps through my love of Starlings I can be kinder to my fellow human kind. Perhaps I can see the early European settlers in a less negative light and also rejoice in the fact that in the coming years they will be out bred by the African Americans who settled here not long after the Europeans (against their will for the most part!!) and by the Hispanic people who have shaped and worked so much of this land and gotten so little credit for it.

The point being that everything shifts and adjusts on earth and I need to remember this. I am kinder to Starlings than to humans. Yet I have almost always taken the side of the Native Americans to the early European settlers.

Perhaps I should not be so concerned with humans out-breeding every other animal on earth because what always happens when a species of animal becomes too abundant for the resources at hand who has no natural predators is that they begin to die of starvation, disease and thirst. These laws are not limited to the animals we consider wild life. We are a part of the wild life. These laws apply to us too. It isn't something we can avoid. It isn't something that we can prevent from happening in a lab or by praying. No God and no science can miraculously increase the natural resources of our planet, it can only convert what is already here.

I find this calming. Here is the key to not caring about all the billions of babies being born to take my water and my food, to compete with my one child for all that he'll need for survival. We will all inevitably pay the price and eventually there will be fewer of us and a lot fewer of all other animals because the earth can only support a certain amount of animal life and it is bigger than us, there is order, there is this incontrovertible order to life. I take comfort there.

I would like to not contribute to any more of the using of resources than is strictly necessary and that is what I strive to become: a person mindful of everything I consume and use and I would like to become lighter and lighter in every way possible. I am not perfect, but I strive to improve all the time.

But I cannot ask the Starling to stop nesting. I cannot ask the Starling to go back to where it came from. It is here now. A part of our North American Melting pot. Like all the other people , animals, plants, and insects who come here from around the world.

Welcome little birds. You are beautiful and I hope you did not get too injured by my house!