Mike Stark is a longtime journalist and author. His previous nonfiction books include the award-winning Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast (Bison Books, 2022) and Wrecked in Yellowstone: Greed, Obsession, and the Untold Story of Yellowstone’s Most Infamous Shipwreck. His first novel, The Derelict Light (Bison Books), was published in 2023. He is the creative director for the Center for Biological Diversity and lives in Tucson, Arizona. His latest book is Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird (Bison Books, 2025) which was published last month.

A few people have asked why I decided to write a book about starlings, one of the most despised birds in North America.

Sure, they sometimes make a mess, pester native birds, and feast on orchard fruits but they’re also one of nature’s best mimics, expertly imitating other birds, car alarms, TV ads and even people. And those murmurations in the sky? I could watch their dark, roiling flocks twist and turn all day. “A dance in the clouds . . . to the music of the winds,” is how one ornithologist described it.

Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird (Bison Books) is a history of these birds in North America, one that starts with their introduction in the late 1800s, continues with their energetic march across the continent, and settles into the contours of our forever war against this invited guest.

One of my favorite parts of researching this book was finding so many people, fueled by either vexation or fascination, who were inspired to put pen to paper to express what they saw or heard, or simply how starlings made them feel. Has any bird ever elicited such an impassioned and varied response?

A sampling of quotes unearthed for Starlings:

“From the moment of leaving the nest it begins to manifest its bright and joyous disposition by singing merrily all day, no matter how inclement the weather, how scanty its supply of food, teaching us a lesson of contentment more effectually than could some of our greatest philosophers.”—Forest and Stream, 1877

“With rush and roar of wings, with a mighty commotion, all sweep together, into one enormous cloud. And still they circle; now dense like a polished roof, now disseminated like the meshes of some vast all-heaven-sweeping net, now darkening, now flashing out a million rays of light, wheeling, rending, tearing, darting, crossing, and piercing one another—a madness in the sky.”—Ornithologist Edmund Selous, 1905

“Particularly in winter . . . the starling . . . added [a] bit of life in the landscape and a note of joy in the bleakness.”—Ornithologist Frank Chapman, 1907

“And they come in millions; in flocks that darken the sky. Their flight is like the roar of the sea, or like the trains going over the arches . . . The starling is a terror, and life around here is hardly worth living; you must have a gun always in your hand, or woe betide the cherries; they come in thousands.”—English farmer S.H. Goodwin, 1908

“The starling is a sphinx-like bird and ordinarily treats other birds with a sort of contemptuous tolerance.”—Ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush, 1916

“Most of its battles are won by dogged persistence in annoying its victim than by bold aggression, and its irritating tactics are sometimes carried to such a point that it seems almost as if the bird were actuated more by a morbid pleasure of annoying its neighbors than by any necessity arising from a scarcity of nesting sites.”—U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1921.

“Squeaks and gurgles, interspersed with pleasant musical notes . . . A flock of starlings makes a great deal of noise.”—Poet and teacher Alice E. Ball, 1923

“Chortling, wheezing, gabbling and whistling, they flock as dense as a black storm cloud, casting sarcastic comments on the passerby . . .”—Naturalist Donald Peattie, 1926

“The song . . . is of gentle singing quality, the chord form deliberate, the scale-form gliding . . . soft but fascinating song, which seems to be simply the expression of an overflow of vigor or good spirits.”—Author Marcia Brownell Bready, 1929

“A new and formidable pest for farmers of this section to combat is slowly working from east to west and has been reported in Iowa. The starling is about the size of the blue bird, it is pugnacious, hardy, noisy and very prolific. It thrives everywhere, drives out other birds and will eat anything. Its song is entrancing.”—The Frontier newspaper, 1934.

“In spite of his remarkable success as a pioneer, the starling probably has fewer friends than almost any other creature with feathers.”—Biologist and writer Rachel Carson, 1939

“But saint or satan, he has made more enemies than anything that bears feathers, including women’s hats, and the campaign against him will go on as relentlessly—and futilely—as ever.”—Maclean’s magazine, 1949.

“Gone suddenly were the peaceful evenings in that New York City suburb, where previously only sweet birdsong and the sound of children at play broke the silence; instead the air was filled with shrill screeches that resembled nothing so much as fingernail scratchings on a blackboard. On any fine evening during the starling invasion, sensible pedestrians carried open umbrellas and stepped cautiously.”—New York Times, 1959

“The starling, by all accounts, is the orneriest, cussedest and in every way the most disagreeable and destructive bird known to man.”—San Bernardino Sun, 1960

“Indeed, they seem as hard to kill as Rasputin. We must rid ourselves of this health and economic menace. Eradication seems to be the only answer.”—U.S. Rep. Frank A. Stubblefield, 1974

“The time has come to acknowledge that in the dawn’s early light and the twilight’s last gleaming one sees not the bald eagle, but the starling.”—Connecticut birdwatcher Samuel Pickering, Jr. 1981

“You can hear the noise of all the wings beating. At times they appeared like a swarm of bees, other times like a truly massive swirling cloud . . . like colliding galaxies . . .”—Starling murmuration witness, 2019

And so it goes. Say what you will about this stubborn bird but I expect no shortage of starlings in the decades to come, nor any diminishment in our poetic reactions to such a lively neighbor.