European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

I decided that I should start including birds we have at home because at the end of the day, they are birds found in Britain, even if they have a wide-ranging presence that spans over the pond. One of these birds is the starling. In Canada, we call them European starlings, possibly because they were brought over from England, along with house sparrows. If you clink on the link I included, you'll learn from the RSPB that their populations are severely under threat here, and it turns out the same goes for house sparrows. I found that so interesting because in the birding community back home, many people consider both starlings and house sparrows to be pests. Indeed, they were brought from England and proliferated, and they are actually considered to be an invasive species. You don't hear people say that about certain other birds, like Eurasian collared doves, because their populations are not expanding too much, and they also don't seem to compete with other species for food or invade the nesting sites of other birds and steal their eggs or babies. In the house I used to live in, there was a bird house that was on one of the trees, and one year, I saw a small group of young starlings in the yard, one of them trying to get into the bird house to take whatever was inside and either eat or at least destroy it. It was a house sparrow nest in there, so it was one invasive species trying to butt out another, but the fact that starlings do this clearly make them a threat to other bird populations as well. As for sparrows, they fight other small birds for nesting spots and end up driving out other bird species, who have to find new places to nest. As a result, they are abundant in Canada. Yet here in the UK, both species have declined. I only wish there were some way to transport all our house sparrows and starlings back to England!

This particular starling is in winter plumage. In the summer, they are usually all black.

Update: June 19, 2021. Apparently I didn't realise I had already posted about this bird and included a new entry on June 19 of 2021, so I'm deleting that post and copying and pasting the post here, even if the info is duplicated somewhat:

Similar to the house sparrow is the starling, although they haven't been quite as hated in Canada, but they are another invasive species brought over by the British at some point. They are quite beautiful, but their numbers in Canada aren't as high as in the UK and some parts of the US where they have either migrated, or were also brought from Britain, such that we can see them murmurating in large numbers. If you've seen those YouTube videos of huge flocks of hundreds or thousands of small black birds flying in what seem to be glycerine bubble shapes, the way they move through the air, you maybe learned that these are starlings. Here in the UK, the RSPB postulates that starlings do it for the following reasons:

It's basically a mass aerial stunt - thousands of birds all swooping and diving in unison. It's completely breathtaking to witness.

We think that starlings do it for many reasons. Grouping together offers safety in numbers – predators such as peregrine falcons find it hard to target one bird in the middle of a hypnotising flock of thousands.

They also gather to keep warm at night and to exchange information, such as good feeding areas.

They gather over their roosting site, and perform their wheeling stunts before they roost for the night.

However, it's not entirely known why they do it, but there tends to be some general consensus about what is probably happening. I have yet to see such a huge murmuration myself, mainly because we don't get such large flocks in London. There is a small flock of maybe 40-50 of them that seem to murmurate over the rover sometimes, but that's about the largest flock I've seen here.

The photo that I've included here is one that I took at Regent's Park. I had wanted to capture one in the sun to showcase its beautiful colours.