December 4-10, 2003

city beat

City Hall Capistrano

Dial b for birds: A flock of starlings make their daily run. Here, they've reached the north side of City Hall. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Starlings flock to Dilworth Plaza like clockwork.

by Trish Boppert

Think the discovery of a bug at City Hall sparked a frenzy? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Come dusk at Dilworth Plaza, a swooping wall of starlings provides city dwellers with some 20 minutes of birds-gone-wild action that begins in October and lasts until early spring.

Around 4:45 p.m. each day, a whistling, winged blanket steals over the west side of Dilworth Plaza like the sinister shadow of a fairy-tale giant. With the quicksilver thrust of fighter jets, the starlings soar and dive toward the plaza’s maple trees, their airborne feints and parries more precisely measured than those of any air show.

You hear them before you see them, their gurgling, whistling sound competing with the honking cacophony of evening rush hour. They drown, ever briefly, the grinding, metallic whine of cars, trucks and buses wheezing down Market Street and around City Hall.

But by 5:10 p.m. or so, the show’s all over as the birds settle into the branches like iridescent ebony beads. With such a show, it’s easy to understand why they haven’t gone unnoticed.

"The first time I saw them, I stopped dead in my tracks. It’s an astonishing phenomenon and I’m enthralled by it," says Joan Schlotterbeck, facilities director for the city Department of Public Works.

When Schlotterbeck first noticed the onslaught six years ago, it reminded her of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Thankfully, though, the City Hall starlings are interested only in a comfortable place to spend the night, leaving for the day come dawn. While they splatter the walkway and benches beneath the maples with Technicolor poop each night, the problem is easily, regularly and inexpensively handled by the City Hall maintenance crew, Schlotterbeck says.

"They can’t roost on the building itself, because it’s screened with netting to keep them out," she notes.

Nobody can definitively say why they’ve chosen City Hall, but they’re now more visible because of that construction-work netting. Scaffolding on the west side of the building is expected to come down when that part of the City Hall restoration is complete in August 2004. (From there, they have to redo the exterior of the building’s southern side.)

Starlings roost in large numbers -- both for warmth and to decrease the odds of getting offed by predators -- when the weather turns cold, dispersing to stake out individual nesting sites and territories come early spring. Across the region, they seem especially noticeable in the fall and winter because they don’t migrate.

It's hard not to notice as the evening sky above City Hall fills with starlings, though many weary rat racers pass with barely an upward glance, even as they shout to be heard above the crescendo. (It sounds something like standing beneath a waterfall of whistling, sputtering tea kettles at full boil.)

Others enjoy the spectacle, like the man who clapped in delight while recently cutting through City Hall. "I love these birds," he shouted, spreading his arms wide as hundreds of shifting, swooping starlings cut patterns in the air above him.

Not every bird lover would agree.

Though these hardy birds have adapted handily, they're not native to North America. Blame their arrival on a 19th-century nut job named Eugene Schieffelin. There were many misguided members of "acclimatization societies" like Schieffelin in the U.S., most of them European immigrants who sought to acclimate familiar old-country birds to new-country skies.

With a personal mission to bring every bird mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to America -- the starling is mentioned but once, for its mimicry, in Henry IV -- Schieffelin imported 60 starlings to New York City from Britain in 1890 and released them in Central Park.

Today, experts place their U.S. numbers at 200 million, and more than a century later, Schieffelin's avian British Invasion shows no sign of flagging. With pigeons and house sparrows, also interlopers among native North American species, starlings are among the most commonly encountered birds in America.

With a reputation for aggression, destruction and dominance, they nest in crevices, bullying bluebirds and woodpeckers from hollow trees and nesting boxes. Prolific as winged rabbits, they produce two and sometimes even three clutches of eggs each season.

"Many people hate or ignore them, but like humans, starlings are really, really good at surviving," says Matt Sharp, a biologist with The Academy of Natural Sciences.

Starlings will eat just about anything, turning to garbage -- a food source seldom lacking in this city -- when insects and soft fruit are scarce. As pushy, loud and messy as they may be, there’s still a lot to like about starlings.

They’re social birds, often seen gathering companionably with blackbirds. And, says Sharp, the male is a busy and ultra-protective parent, finding the nest and helping with the care and feeding of the young. Which is not to say he’s faithful.

Tempted by the feathers of another, starlings are frequently polygamous, but wayward males draw the line at raising the resulting second or third broods. Wily starling females thus seduced and lacking nests of their own successfully slip their eggs into the nests of other starlings.

According to legend, starlings can be taught to talk. Mozart was said to have made one a pet. Like their more melodious mockingbird cousins, starlings are amazing mimics, and have been observed imitating the calls of more than 50 bird species, as well as dogs and cats.

"Starlings have also been known to mimic interesting urban sounds, like cars and ambulances," says Sharp.

They’re fun to watch, too. They’re big on birdbaths and puddles for raucous, wing-splashing dips.

Keep your eyes open around Mayor Street’s office building come spring, and you may see males engaging in a courtly, highly stylized ritual designed to attract mates.

"They do this cool wing-flap thing, holding out their half-extended wings, strutting and doing this high-pitched whistle at the same time," Sharp reports.

Kind of like Mummers, minus the umbrellas and beer. Native or not, starlings have the Philly strut, and some might say the attitude, down cold.