Sturnus vulgaris

Stebbins Nature Sanctuary, Longmeadow, Massachusetts

The breeding plumage starling is a beautiful bird with a bright yellow bill (black in non-breeding plumage), and a dark back with green and gold spangles.

Because starling packs are often huge, will try anything for a meal, and are omnipresent on farmlands, parking lots and garbage pits, they are neck and neck with house sparrows as the public's least favorite bird. But in breeding plumage, they are transformed into a thing of beauty. One hundred of these birds were imported from Europe in the early 1800's into Central Park in New York City, because the importing group wanted all the bird species mentioned by Shakespeare to be in North America.

One of the great spectacles of nature is a huge undulating flock of starlings wheeling as a single organic unit.