My first memories of starlings go very far back in my childhood book of images. My father hated them because they were “flock” birds, noisy & messy pests that bullied the song birds away from the feeders he so lovingly hung from the tree outside our kitchen window.

But my family was also a flock— a group of 14, noisily co-existing in a small stucco bungalow, in rural Arlington over 50 years ago. How could I hate creatures that were so much like us in behavior? And they were so beautiful, with iridescent feathers of deep shades of green, magenta, Prussian blue, and a dusting of stars and snow. But the beauty of the individual bird was lost in the flock.

My older brothers were instructed to shoot at them in our backyard with their BB guns. “One cardinal is worth far more than an entire swarm of starlings”, my father said solemnly. I would always run outside and scare them away, before the boys could even aim their sights.