Anybody know the species of this fledgling?

MataVatnik@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 281 points –

Update: The consensus seems from Lemmy and my friends seems to be European Starling. Thank you so much everyone. I was concerned on what kind of diet this fella should be fed, looks like I have somewhere to start now.

Having issues contacting the wildlife shelter at the moment

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That's a European bird, we're in the northeastern US. But we can name them Grumpy Featherfluffle anyways 😄

European Starlings were introduced in the US about 100 years ago by a misguided fool in Manhattan. They are invasive, but absolutely everywhere around the US at this point and that's definitely a European Starling fledgling.

by a misguided fool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_starling

As part of a nationwide effort, about 60 common starlings were released in 1890 into New York's Central Park by Eugene Schieffelin, president of the American Acclimatization Society. It has been widely reported that he had tried to introduce every bird species mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare into North America, but this claim has been traced to an essay in 1948 by naturalist Edwin Way Teale, whose notes appear to indicate that it was speculation.

Yeah, that seems somewhat misguided.

And they're assholes.

They're perfectly nice birds unless you're a farmer, leave out trash, or conveniently have an open dryer vent for them to loudly nest in like I do.

For those that don't know, they're a common nuisance bird because they nest in enclosed cavities like tree trucks or the siding of your house or any open vents. If you're from the US (At least the Midwest or East Coast, not sure about the western states) and have seen very large flocks of small black birds dancing in the air like schooling fish, behavior called murmations, those are Starlings.

I have this wonderful memory back when I lived in the The Netherlands and worked near Amsterdam of people outside in an open shopping area, sitting down on a table and eating patates (big chunky chips) and a starling on the ground looking at them and seemingly giving them a long speech.

I always imagine it was some "poor me" speech on how he had 8 starving young ones at home and would they thrown a patate his way.

For some reason in that place starlings were much comfortable around humans thanwhat I've seen elsewhere, and like sparrows would be going around on the ground looking for scraps.

Now that you mention that I can probably guess where the nest was in our building. I hear birds chirping in our warehouse all the time.

They're pretty loud in general so you would probably know, but they don't tend be like to hang about indoors. Might just be house sparrows if you're hearing them on the warehouse floor.

You should download the Merlin ornithology app. It's built by the Cornell ornithology lab and has picture and sound ID features for birds as well as just a lot of generally useful identification information.

just give it to me straight internetor, is my outdoor cat cancelled or not?

Little bastards are why I now know you need to hide your grass seed beneathe staw. Lazy little fucks.