It is easy to scorn the most abundant and least beautiful among us. Easy to forget that even such a lowly bird as the common starling in North America, with its metallic sheen and vampire black cloak, might be the exotic myna bird on another continent. Their ubiquity is their undoing. Flocks of starlings are referred to as constellations at best, but more commonly as scourges, filths, or vulgarities. Their conservation status is ‘of least concern.’ I do not consider them a nuisance, even when they arrive in dozens, chattering in the trees outside my window. To me, they are a welcome cacophony, well deserving of their only noble flock name- a murmuration, which serves to remind of me the ecstatic chaos of the world and entices me to step into it.
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