We may have plenty of starlings around here, but the number pales in comparison to the flocks that bedeviled Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1970s. Sucked into engines, colliding with propellers, bouncing off canopies — birds are dangerous to aircraft and the people who fly them. Farmers had been complaining for years about the massive flocks of starlings, grackles and blackbirds. “If we could ship 14 million starlings to the Pentagon, or Central Park, we’d get results,” he said before boarding a plane to Washington to request that the injunction be lifted. At those times, the starlings are coming or going from their communal roost several miles away, feeding as they go to some extent.

Source: Washington Post March 25, 2019 20:37 UTC