Starlings are consumate imitators.

They will imitate anything and everything around them.

There are a few that live on our house, and they do lawnmowers, blackbirds, cats, shrieking children, wipoorwills, you name it.

They're great fun to listen to, especially the one that knows how to imitate a chainsaw!

I didn't know they could talk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKtj4E_iss

Video of starlings flocking. Imagine if they were all speaking, in unison...

Aw crap. Starlings are one of my favorates. Yes it's interesting that they can talk, but unless this bird was rescued the thought of keeping it in a cage makes me go all.....eurgh.

His voice sounds like one of those artificial voice boxes (my fiancee calls them cancer kazoos).
I wouldn't want one of those birds. I think they are gross and grubby. Plus he's got a wicked looking beak.

Hey,

Starlings are considered feral pests here Down Under. They're shot and poisoned like nobody's business, unfortunately.

Undisputed champion of avian mimics is the male Aussie Lyre Bird. They have no calls of their own, but "steal" the calls of other birds, and give a perfect, "playback quality" of the song of kookaburras, magpies, crows, roosters- and not just birds either, but also kangaroos, dingoes, chainsaws, typewriters, SUV engines... David Attenborough once filmed one, and it started making the whirring sound that his camera was emitting!

No, no. My "david attenborough" tag will work, or "lyrebird."

As I recall, there was some discussion about whether the chainsaw sound it made was real or not.

I met a couple at a street fair here who had a pet starling. They even let me hold it - well I mean it perched on my finger. Cute little thing - their plumage is irridescent and just beautiful. They are considered pests out here, too, and this is probably why it's lawful to keep one as a pet.

If I was going to keep a bird, I think this would be a nice idea. But I wonder, they're SUCH serious flocking birds, wouldn't a single, solitary one in a people house eventually just go insane without 5,000 of his friends around all the time?

Loved the video of the group flocking before roosting for the night - looks just like a huge school of fish in the sky. Surreal. LOVED IT. :)

Isn't there some special story about how they were introduced here?

(This past weekend I shot a great picture of one, though, perched on a street sign.)

European sparrows and starlings are both introduced species in the US as I recall.

I beg of you, click the link above for European starling.

In the name of all that is holy?

Y'know, seems like Shakespeare fans have played hell with our delicate American ecosystem, doesn't it?

I'm sorry I can't find the article, but I recently read in hard copy (I believe it was Audubon) about a study where starlings were kept in researchers' homes for spans of 12 months or more to study their ability to mimic. What the researchers found was that starlings were easily able to learn to mimic phrases, songs played by musical instruments, and other, less "songlike" noises (I think one mimicked a coffee grinder) but that rather than simply repeating what the heard, the starlings would pick and choose what they wanted to use as song. So for example, one bird would repeat a phrase from a piano piece, but cut out before the pause at the end of the phrase. Another example was of one who screamed, "I have a question!" while receiving medical treatment. I wish I could find the article; it raised some interesting questions about the ability to interpret as well as learn. I believe the article title was "Why you can't teach a starling to sing."

Thank you, and I heart your icon.

Yowza, I've never seen anything like that in the whole of my life...and here I naively thought that Ravens had the market cornered in bird mimicry.