Most people don't stop to notice how good a mimic the starling is. He's an ugly, scraggly blackbird, looking much like something left over from the age of the dinosaurs. Starlings are rude intruders in our environment taking over the habitat of our native species. Some of them live inside our sheds and barn in the summer, finding entrance through any tiny opening. They fly into the chimney and plug that up as well. Once there they make a huge mess building and maintaining their nest.
Starlings can very cleverly mimic a large variety of sounds, especially other birds. I've heard them sound like crying hawks, the mewing cat, the soft whistle of the bluebirds and the nearby swallows. Imagine my surprise one day when I heard the song of a faraway coyote and realized the resident nesting starling was making this sound from the top of the power pole that sits in the middle of the yard.
In the intervening time, I've come to admire this one quality of starlings and not be surprised when his ventriloquism copies other unusual sounds. However, I think you can understand my amazement on a recent morning about sunrise when I realized the starling was up on the power pole ringing like the telephone in the nearby shop, which he can frequently hear. I guess from now on when he caws like a crow or chups like his blackbird cousins it won't be nearly as exciting as that time he tricked me into running across the yard from the garden to answer the phone. I wonder if he thought this was a good joke? I thought I heard something that sounded like "ha ha ha ha".
