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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

I had no idea people disliked them. The main thing I knew about Starlings was their murmurations - large swarms of them undulating and swirling in the air. Actually recently a school friend of mine did some sketches of them which were pretty neat: https://www.dougieharley.com/single-post/2017/02/02/Starling...

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Starlings aren't so bad except that they're natural mimics. In urban environments that means that they frequently learn to mimic urban noise pollution as part of their bird calls.

Here in NYC, you can have the police tow a car whose alarm goes off too frequently or doesn't shut down after a couple minutes. Not much you can do about a bird near your window mimicking the same sound with praeternatural accuracy every 30 seconds, all day long.

Somebody told me when I was young that in the late 1800s in Ireland (when he was young) that the flocks would be so large that they would block out the sunlight all around. He was not a man prone to exaggeration.

I had the impression they were like sparrows in that they swarm all over food sources and are in particular a scourge for backyard birding because they'll kill off the birds you actually want to see (and consume a ton of seed while they're at it).

Nope.

I have a feeder I put about two pounds of seed in a day. Doves, red-winged blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, house finches and house sparrows all get their share. The sparrows aren't "swarming" anyone out. If anything the red-winged blackbirds are the bullies.

I have a bird house with a pair of sparrows. About 20" above that is a nest of breeding Robins that like a spot on the underside of my deck. The sparrows have never messed with the Robin nest in any way. There are eastern bluebirds nearby and the sparrows have caused no trouble for them either, despite the suitability of the house.

This "HOSP" hate is misplaced. Please don't hate on these birds. There are a couple pages on the Internet about the awful depredations of the terrible HOSP and so hating on them has become a fad.

I mean, sparrows really do destroy other birds' nests and kill their young.

That's just normal bird stuff. Lots of different birds do that.

Fair enough, but sparrows are so numerous that they can really crowd out all the others.

House sparrows (and purple finches) are actually being crowded out by the house finch across North America. The house finch competes aggressively for nesting sites. But it's a pretty little bird so I don't expect any anti-house finch sites to pop up.

I can't speak for anyone else but sparrows are far and away the most common bird I see.

I mean I'll grant that I like looking at blue jays despite them also being notoriously aggressive.

Love those.

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