Do you watch starlings? Starlings watch you!

Science Daily reports that starlings and other birds can tell if you are watching them, because they are watching you! Experiments show that if you are near a starling's food and looking at the food, the starling will stay away, but if you are just as near but looking away, the starling will approach and eat.

Starlings are intelligent creatures-- maybe not up there with crows, but pretty smart. They have a wide repertory of their own songs and are good mimics of other birds' songs and repetitive neighborhood sounds.

The starlings where I work have two babies this year, and had them considerably earlier than last year's fated infant. I go in and out of my building a number of times a day, and each time i do, I say, with as close to the same tone as possible, "Hello, little starlings! Hello, little starlings! How pretty you are! How pretty you are!" Maybe somedfay I will hear a whistle with the same intonation; at the least I hope they will be less wary of me.

This is the time of year when starlings fall out of their nests. A good site obout starlings and how to care for them can be found at Starling Talk.