A starling comparison on passenger pigeons

Ed Shannon, Between the Corn Rows

Published Friday, August 22, 2008

There isn’t a spelling error involved with the use of the word starling instead of startling. A synonym for startling is surprise or sudden, and as I will explain this word doesn’t fit in with the theme of this column at all. However, the reference to a bird named the starling does have a local connection. And the comparison with the passenger pigeon will be explained later.

Not too many years ago there were some local concerns about a black bird called the starling. These birds moved from place to place in large flocks. At night these flocks roosted in trees located in several parts of the city. One particular area I can recall was along North Bridge Avenue.

In the early hours of the day these hungry birds would fly out to the countryside around Albert Lea to feed and participate in whatever else the feathered flocks do with their time. Then in the early evening those flocks would come back into the city to roost in their favorite trees. And what used to bother the local residents was the way these birds would chatter and noisily visit before settling down for a night of rest.

Yet there was a good-news factor regarding these bothersome birds. With the arrival of colder weather, the birds would fly in large flocks to the southern part of the nation to bother folks in other localities. The bad-news factor came with the advent of warmer weather when the birds migrated back to this area for another season of being what some folks considered to be real nuisances.

I can recall watching these flocks going from the Bridge Avenue area, to cite one of their roosting places, early in the day en route to their feeding sites east of the city. Then late in the day these birds would come back over the neighborhood in small groups to head for their favorite roosting trees. Now, I live on a street, which implies we’re right on the edge of a grove of trees. Sometimes these birds would perch in the big oak trees for a short rest to discuss events of the day, then fly on west for a few blocks to spend the night in another neighborhood. Thus, they never roosted in our trees. Some folks had the opinion starlings didn’t like to roost in oak trees. Anyway, we didn’t have the problems with these birds like what were being reported by the residents in the Bridge Avenue neighborhood. In fact, I ever knew a few folks in that part of the city who cut down trees to avoid having the starlings around during the nighttime.

I’m not too sure why these starlings aren’t as numerous as they used to be here in the city. Maybe it was the hungry owls that caused this decline in numbers. Then again, maybe the birds decided to live out in the country to be closer to their food sources.

Right about here, allow me to explain that the comparison between the starling flocks once so prevalent here in Albert Lea isn’t with the present small collection of local pigeons. Incidentally, I featured our local pigeons and their favorite perching place, the south edge of the roof above Antiques of the Midwest at 218 S. Washington Ave., in the Sept. 28, 2007, column. Instead, the intended comparison is with the once overly numerous and now extinct passenger pigeons.

Those wild pigeons used to migrate by the millions and even more millions from their winter quarters in the south to the northern parts of the nation and even up into Canada.

In theory, those passenger pigeons would have been roosting in the trees all over the city and county during the warmer months of the year 12 to 13 decades ago. What I’m trying to emphasize is that there wouldn’t have been any comparison at all with the more recent influx of starlings or any other flocks of birds.

In next week’s column we’ll continue on with this topic and feature the memories of several pioneers who remembered the era when passenger pigeons were once an overly numerous part of bird life here in Freeborn County.

Ed Shannon’s column has been appearing in the Tribune every Friday since December 1984.