How Starling Get Their Name?

group of starlings is called a “murmuration,” presumably because of their mingled chatter when they roost in thousands. Then they take off again, turning in unison through the skies, like one huge bird or millions of twirling stars. The starling’s Anglo-Saxon name was staer. The “ing” suffix, a diminutive, was added later to form “starling.” Some etymologists connect the name with a celestial star: In winter starlings have a speckled, or “starry,” plumage, later replaced by glossy black; and when they fly they look a bit “star-shaped” from beneath. “Sterling” silver could, it is thought, also be connected with starlings, from Edward the Confessor’s silver coins, which were marked with four birds. exterminated. 

Ornithologists on each side heatedly attacked one another, and the vituperative public argument became known as the “Sparrow War.” But the sparrows were here to stay. Even though in 1899, the American Ornithologists Union rejected the “eligibility” of the house sparrow to be an “American” bird, it finally had to be added to the checklist in 1931. The number of house sparrows decreased somewhat when horses were replaced by automobiles, but this immigrant is now one of our most ubiquitous birds. The Venerable Bede compared the human soul to a little “sparrow,” flitting through a hall: “It enters in at one door and quickly flies out through the other. 

So this life of man appears but for a moment; what follows or indeed what went before, we know not at all.” Not only God but ornithologists too count hairs— or feathers. In 1933 Alexander Wetmore published The Number of Feathers in the English Sparrow, which reported that, not including the downy under feathers, the number varied seasonally, from 1,339 to 3,332. Far from being irrelevant, the number of “sparrow’s” feathers can have taxonomic importance. Most of the New World birds we call “sparrows” have nine primary wing feathers and belong to the Ember - izidae family (see Bunting). 

They are not related to Eurasian sparrows, which have ten primary wing feathers and are in the Passeridae family. Some Old World sparrows, however, were introduced to America and elsewhere, thriving so well they now seem like natives. The most notable is the house sparrow, sometimes (inaccurately) called the English sparrow. It was introduced to North America in the nineteenth century, and in 1871 Marianne North, a Victorian lady traveler and artist, wrote, “In and about all the great towns of the States I saw little houses built for the accommodation of sparrows; the birds had been imported from England to get rid of a caterpillar. 

The sparrows seemed to take kindly to their new homes and diet, but it was still a problem how they would endure the winter.” Not only did they endure, but they also multiplied, soon becoming pests, and Americans were divided as to whether they should be