The Bigger They Get…

My sister’s cat first alerted us to Starling Day a decade ago.  He paced the windowsill, meowing and brrping and finally howling.  When I went to see what he was so agitated about, I saw that our dogwood tree rustled and churned with the excited fluttering of hundreds of noisy birds.

After suffering a brief, panicky Tippi Hedron moment, I called a local nature center and described the birds and their behavior.  The birds were migrating starlings and they like the berries in our dogwood.  A LOT.  I wish for the sake of my butt that I could get so excited about fruit.

The woman further explained that starlings aren’t native to the United States.  In the 1890′s, a man named Eugene Scheiffelin decided that New York should be home to all the songbirds mentioned in Shakespeare’s works so he brought 100 starlings from England and released them in Central Park.  I so love that story.  It’s romantic and serendipitous and just goes to show that there have always been people with more money than sense and that that’s not always a bad thing, current Wall Street execs and members of government excepted.

Well, every year since we first saw them and, I imagine, for many years before we noticed them, descendants of those original immigrants stopped off in our backyard each autumn on their way to somewhere warmer.

Once we’d noticed them, I started keeping casual track of their visits and what the timing of their visits might mean for the coming winter.  The years they came in September we’ve had bitterly cold, snowy, icy winters.  The years they came in mid-October as they did today, our winters have been average – chilly with measurable snow a few times, but on the whole pretty typical for our region.  I celebrate when they show up in November because that has meant winters with very few cold snaps, little if any snow, and daytime temperatures mostly in the low 40′s.  There have been a couple of years when we missed their visits and I was surprised each time to find myself a little edgy because the starlings have apparently become an important part of the emotional preparation I undergo in advance of my least favorite season.

This morning the starlings were nervous, probably because Yes,Dear and I were sitting outside with the dogs when they arrived.  Fewer than usual stopped and those that did stop didn’t stay long, but they came and we were here to see it.

Yes,Dear doesn’t understand why I get ridiculously excited on Starling Day.  This morning he asked, Is it fun to be so crazy?

My answer?

Yes.  Definitely.