The starling looked conspicuous out in the middle of Eighty Acre Meadow. Not only did the splendid iridescent plumage standout in the somber woods, but for a bird more likely to be in a city, there was no sign of mansion or man through the screening of the blue oak forest. It was as wild as visible wild can be, yet the civilized bird was seemingly at home in the woods.

I watched as the invader from Europe perched on a tall pine snag that was riddled with woodpecker holes, and it boldly claimed residency after driving the timid flicker away. I had noticed the starling's presence in late winter after they found the dead tree with the cherished crevice-home so scarce in trees. I know that not only the flicker and several species of woodpeckers prize tree dens, but ash-throated flycatchers, bluebirds, tree swallows, and even English sparrows would also have rejoiced in owning the cavity.

Starlings have been condemned for monopolizing cities all across America and they are very successful, quickly utilizing superior nest sites such as the flicker hole.

Knowing something about their bully behavior, I wasn't inclined to accept the foreigner in one of my pet woods where it would compete with the towhee and ground sparrows for food, but what could I do short of sinful shooting or climbing 20 dangerous feet to plug the den? Sometimes everyone loses in expulsion.

Again I was impressed by the starling's stately stance and fresh feathers that suggests pride and a lot of preening. Nothing slummy about the starling even though it might live in the ghettos! I might react more acceptively toward the nasty neighbor if I didn't know about its rowdy character and dominating persistence in demanding a share of the resources. No wonder huge flocks of starlings congregate in the winter in masses that swirl into the sky like speckled clouds.

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It is interesting that three species of dark-colored birds--starlings, blackbirds, and crows--gather together in the winter almost as a display of power in numbers. Come spring, all of those flock-birds split up into pairs to seek a nesting place, although in general they prefer community habitats. Red-winged blackbirds cluster in the marshes, each pair finding a separate nest site, just as starlings often occupy the canopies of a building in one big colony. Even flocks of waterfowl and shorebirds break off into pairs and retire to special wetland niches in a specialized habitat before gathering again in the autumn.

Actually there were at least three cavities in the pine snag, and I suspect the other holes will go to the starling's kin, as one day I saw five of the birds in that dead tree. Precious is the forest that has a variety of live and dead trees, and the dead often attracts more animals than the live. Insects will be chewing away at the dead wood interior, and birds and other animals will be after the burrowers. John Muir said, "The woods are full of dead and dying trees, yet needed for their beauty to complete the beauty of the living."

Muir also said, "Going to the woods is going home." The more likely dwellers of the woods would be nuthatches, hermit thrushes, owls, raccoon, opossums, wood mice, and dainty deer--all animals that call the woods home. You can expect certain creatures in the woods, and even certain plants and trees, ingredients that constitute the feeling of home or environment. Without the denizens of the depths of the forest, the woods is but a stage ready for the actors.

The deep woods of No Creek bottomlands that I remember in Missouri boyhood days were densely grown with oak and maple and the ghostly sycamores. There was a silent mystery that seemed to pervade in those glades as if sound was swallowed up leaving a stillness that lingered even though winds blew in the hills and storms roared over the canopy. Down low where the gray squirrel slipped through the shadows and the great horned owl hid in the hollows, a cathedral-like calmness lingered over the forest floor. Somewhere down there, the timber rattlesnake searched for a spot of sun along the valley walls and the Jack-in-the-pulpit wildflower opened its spring beauty largely unseen by human eyes. In the spring the morel mushrooms secretively pushed their pallid flesh above the leaf mat challenging the seeker of fungi.

Shady forests hide a million secrets of hidden bird nests and mysterious ground dens. Many of those unexposed wonders complete their cycles for years without a human observer. Indeed, we ponder the advent of flowers that bloomed brightly millions of years ago before there was a human to interpret that condition as beautiful. Is mankind truly special in being able to decipher the flower petal as beautiful when the prime function has been to attract insects?

The starlings I most remember in those distant days of boyhood were the ones that occupied a grove of hole-ridden locust trees behind my Uncle John's home in the hills above No Creek. Those determined flyers would buzz away from their dens like a small squadron of bombers laden with payload. My cousins and I would slip up on those birds that somehow found Uncle John's farm--also far away from town--and practice shooting with our B.B. guns.

All of that rural habitat and even all the old gray buildings of Uncle John and Aunt Mamie's farm are gone now, leveled by time and wear after many families had passed through those majestic doors. The occupants have moved on, descendants of John's family scattered to other states, and the starling descendants reunite in other hollow trees somewhere over the hill.

Starlings and man continually expand sending descendants abroad to colonized new homes. Starlings expanded from l00 brought to America in l890, the first breeding pair nesting under the eves of the American Museum of Natural History! By l952, starlings had extended their range throughout the entire United States! Rex Burress - April 4, l999