Starlings in Distress

The starlings that make a noisy nuisance of themselves in many a U.S. town have been attacked with everything from stuffed owls to roman candles. They generally return to their roosts, loud and sassy, as soon as the crisis has passed. The current Science tells of a subtler tactic, using starling psychology.

Zoologists Hubert Frings and Joseph Jumber of Pennsylvania State College observed that starlings have a special "distress call." Sneaking into a barn one winter night, the researchers caught a starling that was sheltering there and held it up by its feet. The bird gave a piercing shriek, and the other starlings fled from the barn. When the trick worked well in several barns, Frings and Jumber caught more starlings and made them shriek their distress calls into a tape recorder.

One night last summer, at State College, Pa., where 20,000 starlings had formed a monstrous roost, Frings and Jumber set up their tape recorder under four infested trees. The starlings awoke to the nightmare sound of starlings in deep distress. They fled the haunted trees and did not come back.

Borrowing two sound trucks, the zoologists advanced on Millheim, Pa. (pop. 750, plus 10,000 starlings). After three nights of highly amplified shrieking, most of the starlings evacuated Millheim (only 100 insensitive birds remained in town). A somewhat longer campaign rid State College (pop. 17,000) of all its obnoxious starling roosts.

The many-decibel shrieking is hard on humans too, but it need not last for long. Starlings driven from their roosts do not return when the noise stops; they stay away from the haunted roosts for the rest of the season.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.