Species and numbers are falling as winter wears on. House Finches streamed from their creekside roost tree by the hundreds last fall. Now, a handful are all I see on a given morning. American Goldfinches, once reliable, have vanished from town. The Great Blue Heron has made a single appearance this year, and I’ve not seen any of the local Belted Kingfishers at all since mid-December. Cedar Waxwings are off to warmer climes, their food sources here having dwindled beyond whatever they find suitable around here, I suppose. Blue Jays don’t rouse out early for those hillside acorns anymore.
Even the Carolina Wren has moved up- or downstream; it’s a rare morning I hear it.
So what has taken their places? I don’t mean in a strictly ecological sense, just in terms of what I am able to perceive for an hour or so, dawn to dawn. Some of it may mean nothing.
The Regulars
Common Ravens: once a bird of the wilds, they’re now one step away from scrounging for scraps in rush hour traffic on the corner of 10th and Pennsylvania. They’re so charismatic, three around town is all we need. In the summer, I think they’ll be outnumbering the American Crows up high.
Tufted Titmice / Black-capped Chickadees/ White-breasted Nuthatches: these three, often together, are definitely getting more vocal as winter progresses. They are nearly invisible on this urban edge during the rest of the year, but cold seems to have activated them, or maybe it’s just that nearly everyone else left. They’re not feeder addicts, these ones, either. I know this because no one in this part of town has a feeder. The loose aggregation of this species trio, instead, works the lower Bald Eagle Creek and the Little Juniata all day, in company of some Dark-eyed Juncos and whichever Carolina Wren and Northern Cardinal they’re crossing the territory of.
I started to notice titmouse and chickadee songs again by late December, and nuthatches are also doing what I think are pre-courtship vocalizations. Today, the White-breasted Nuthatch framed itself with pink as it gleaned a tree by the interstate, directly between me and the east. It started calling there, nine-or-so repetitions, and continued this out of sight.
House Sparrows: they haven’t gone anywhere, but do seem to be taking to the air more in the winter, more visible as House Finches fade. I think they’ve taken up residence in two nearby bushes, but mostly I just hear their monotonous chirping. I note a few but dozens could cram in there. Over by the post office, I often see a bush jam-packed with them.
Rock Pigeons: The third of our invasive quartet has drastically reduced its commuting numbers to Sinking Valley; today, I caught a dozen heading north instead, and because I can see during the day that pigeon numbers in town haven’t dropped, I conclude that my own lower numbers are simply due to my vantage point. (I can’t see 180 degrees.)
It’s Always Cloudy in Appalachia
To be fair, there hasn’t been a cloudless sunrise since January 1st, when birds that I mostly miss now were all in evidence. Most are still around, just not, it appears, roosting in or near town, or for whatever reason, they have fallen silent and surreptitious except at the sunniest of dawns. If we have another one of these before summer (Appalachian hyperbole!) I’ll get to see if local species diversity is truly diminishing toward some January or February basement.
Not To Worry - Starlings Will Keep Us Happy
Nevertheless, starlings are filling this avian void. They seem content gorging on the dried fruit along our local thoroughfares, and but for the lone velociraptor, free from the worst predator dangers.
For context: during summers, the European Starling is much less visible, paired up and nesting, a minor element of a rich-ish urban avifauna (I tabulate 30 to 40 species in a later spring sit). They don’t commute from anywhere then, I believe, and the main way I pick them up every dawn is their interstate light pole gatherings, which I haven’t seen lately.
Today, they’re the alpha and omega. We already know they’ll be zooming over Brush Mountain from the south. Before that main flock shows up, singles appear as early as 7:27 AM. They’re certainly not the first species to make their morning appearance: these days, first is usually the singing American Robin or a Dark-eyed Junco, and then the crying tannery raven. But once starlings arrive on the scene, they dominate, nightclub-style.
The singles loop around in broad circles, making single ‘pips’; then by 7:40, pairs take over, and they loop around as well, as if searching. Flocks then drip into town through the Gap, not a solid mass of hundreds, but already splintered, dozens at a time. I stop trying to count the repeats; today’s 76 is probably not close to accurate. More types of calls and songs, and already, a small group is perching in the 10 o’clock sycamores (no Cooper’s Hawk this morning), seemingly in anticipation of the sun’s rays which, though weak, are starting to push through.
Then, at last, there they are, 500 feet away, jostling for position on the entrance ramp lampposts. For a long time, I thought they liked these posts because of the early morning warmth from cooling bulbs, but I’ve seen them gather there throughout the day as well. Only ravens are imposing enough to chase them off.
By a little after 8 AM, with as usual the Downy’s wake-up call signaling the end of dawn, the checklist stands at a rachitic twelve, and no species’ numbers has climbed even close to 100. At one point, my mind composed a dawn ‘chorus’ of robin to the left and titmouse to the right, but whom was I fooling? All the filler was starling. Now, as every other species goes its way, starling speech takes over, as insistent as any human-produced noise this time of day, which there is a lot of as well.
Objectively, the European Starling is a gorgeous and fascinating bird. Mozart certainly thought that; it’s fun to imagine that some of the greatest works of Western classical music might have been ‘inspired by’ (plagiarized from) a bird (Freemason, no doubt).
As Above, So Below
I am equally fascinated by the scorn and even hatred that bird-people pour on European Starlings here where they take over our winter cities. They’re dirty. They’re aggressive. Invasive. Pestilent. There are just too many of them. Magnificent, inscrutable videos of starling murmurations aside (Pachelbel not in the original), they are just PESTS.
So whom does THAT remind you of? It’s a bit like self-loathing, really. We resent the birds that remind us too much of our worst qualities. The ‘aliens’ the most. Rock Pigeons get a bit of pass, what with their symbolic associations and usefulness as message carriers and meat. House Sparrows can be pitied because across the pond, they’re dying out—and in North America as well. House Finches: at least they’re from this continent!
Like people, though, dirty, aggressive, invasive, winged-rat starlings are amazing to watch. Why not? They’re social animals par excellence, speaking meanings we can barely begin to unravel, hive-minds. I imagine myself sitting here for decades, day after day, no Dr. Doolittle: without context-clues, how can I ever figure out what they’re screaming at each other? And then the mimicry. Why??? They mess with me, unintentionally. How many birders have had to cross a Killdeer or a dozen other species off their ‘heard-bird’ checklists when revealed as starlings?
I’ve gone on long enough. These aren’t moral judgments. I’m just saying, I like starlings like I like people. I wonder if the author of the Emerald Tablet would have agreed: Sturnus vulgaris, Homo sapiens: as above, so below.