European Starling

The short answer

• European Starlings were introduced to New York in the early 1890s and now occur continent-wide. They are not protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the US, though state law still applies.
• Suet is the problem: starlings rate it top-tier and a flock can strip a standard cage in a morning.
• An upside-down suet feeder, where the cake is reachable only from below, solves it almost completely. Woodpeckers, chickadees and nuthatches feed inverted without difficulty; starlings will not persist.
• Starlings do not eat safflower or nyjer at all, so a station built on those two seeds plus in-shell sunflower gives them nothing.
• A 1.5 in nest box entrance hole excludes starlings entirely, which protects bluebirds, tree swallows and small woodpeckers at no cost.

The suet cake that used to last a fortnight now goes in three days, and the woodpeckers have stopped bothering with it. That is a starling flock, and it is fixed by one change of feeder geometry rather than by a war of attrition. The identification comes first, because half the people with a starling problem think they have two different birds.

Two birds in one year#

Most people who report a starling problem have been watching two different-looking birds and assuming they are separate species. In December the starling is a dark, dumpy bird covered in crisp white spots, with a dull gray-brown bill. In April the same individual is glossy black shot through with green and purple, nearly unspotted, with a bright yellow bill.

Nothing was replaced. Starlings molt once a year, in late summer, into feathers tipped with white and buff. Those tips are the spots. Over autumn and winter they abrade away, and the iridescence underneath is uncovered by wear rather than by a spring molt. It is one of the neatest things a common bird does, and it is happening on your suet feeder all winter.

The structural marks never change and they are what you should identify by:

• A short, square tail. In flight a starling looks almost tailless, with sharply pointed triangular wings. This is the single fastest separation from any blackbird.
• A long, straight, pointed bill, quite unlike the heavy conical bill of a cowbird or the chisel bill of a grackle. Starlings feed by gaping, forcing the closed bill into turf and opening it to make a hole, which is why you see them stalking lawns in a stiff, purposeful walk.
• They walk. They do not hop. Sparrows and finches hop. Starlings, grackles and robins walk.
• A dark eye. Common Grackles have a staring pale yellow eye.

Juveniles cause the most confusion. A fresh juvenile in June is plain mouse-gray-brown with a dark bill and looks nothing like its parents. In August it molts into spotted plumage from the body outward and spends several weeks as a gray-headed bird with a spotted body, which gets reported as a rare bird every year.

What a flock does to a feeding station#

Starlings arrive as a unit, usually mid-morning rather than at first light, and the arrival is the whole problem. Six to thirty birds drop onto the station at once. They are not especially aggressive one to one, but they do not need to be. Volume and occupancy do the work: a downy woodpecker arriving at an occupied suet cage simply leaves and tries again later, and if the flock is cycling through every twenty minutes, later never comes.

The behavior has three distinct phases in the year:

Two habits matter for management. Starlings feed by probing and gaping rather than by clinging and hammering, so they are clumsy on anything that demands a sustained grip. And they are heavy for a feeder bird at about 82 g, roughly seven times a chickadee and three times a downy woodpecker. Both weaknesses are exploitable.

Suet, and the one change that ends the problem#

Skip for this species: Safflower, Nyjer, Nectar.

Suet sits at the top of that table, and a standard wire cage hung on a branch is close to a purpose-built starling feeder: it is open on all four sides, and most cages have a wooden tail-prop panel below, which is the perch a starling uses.

The fix is an upside-down, or bottom-access, suet feeder. The cake sits horizontally with a solid roof above it and a mesh floor below, so a bird has to hang inverted to reach the fat. That is routine for the species you actually want on suet:

• Top-tier favorite for: Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Carolina Wren, European Starling
• Eaten readily by: Blue Jay, Eastern Bluebird, Steller's Jay, California Scrub-Jay, Common Grackle
• Taken occasionally by: Northern Cardinal, American Robin, Baltimore Oriole, House Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird

Downy, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers, chickadees, titmice and nuthatches all forage on the undersides of limbs and feed hanging without hesitation. Starlings can flutter at it and grab a mouthful, but they cannot hold the position, and within two or three days they stop trying.

One honest cost: Northern Flickers and Carolina Wrens use inverted suet poorly, flickers because they are built to prop on a tail and cannot invert comfortably. If flickers are your priority, keep a conventional tail-prop cage but move it inside a wire cage with mesh under about 2 in, which excludes starlings by size instead.

The rest of the station#

Suet is the loudest problem but not the only one. Starlings rate mealworms top-tier, which puts them in direct conflict with bluebirds. Feed live or dried mealworms from a covered or caged mealworm dish rather than an open saucer, and put them out early, before the flock's mid-morning round. Bluebirds are on station at dawn; starlings usually are not.

On seed the answer is simpler, because two common foods are worth nothing to them at all. Starlings do not eat safflower and do not eat nyjer. They take sunflower hearts and cracked corn readily, and shelled peanuts too, but they are poor at cracking hulls, so in-shell black oil sunflower gives them far more trouble than it gives a cardinal or a chickadee. A station running in-shell sunflower, safflower and nyjer, with the platform feeder put away, offers a starling flock almost nothing.

What does not work#

• Scaring them. Plastic owls, hawk silhouettes, flash tape and ultrasonic units all lose their effect within days. Starlings roost on airport buildings.
• Weight-activated seed feeders alone. They do close under 82 g, but starlings mostly want your suet and mealworms, not your sunflower, so this fixes the smallest part of the problem. Details in caged versus weight-activated feeders.
• Emptying feeders for a day or two. Starlings keep a mental map of the neighborhood and will keep dropping in on a site that has gone quiet. If you use a shutdown, plan on a fortnight and change the food before you restart.
• Cayenne pepper on suet. It does not reliably deter starlings, and pepper dust is an irritant to eyes, both theirs and yours.

The nest box angle, and the status question#

The change with the longest reach costs nothing. A round entrance hole of 1.5 in excludes European Starlings completely, because an adult cannot pass it, while Eastern Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, chickadees, titmice and Downy Woodpeckers all use it easily. Every nest box you put up or repair should have that hole size unless you are deliberately targeting a larger species. Starlings are aggressive cavity competitors that evict flickers, sapsuckers, martins and bluebirds, and hole size settles the argument before it starts.

On legal status, be precise. European Starlings, like House Sparrows and Rock Pigeons, are non-native and are not listed under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States. That exemption is federal and narrow. State wildlife law, local ordinances and cruelty statutes still apply and differ between jurisdictions, so check with your state wildlife agency before relying on it. Nothing on this page requires you to: exclusion, hole size and food choice are legal everywhere and hold indefinitely.

It is also worth keeping the bird in view rather than only the nuisance. Starlings are exceptional vocal mimics that fold car alarms, phone tones and other species' calls into a long rambling song, and their winter murmurations are among the most striking wildlife spectacles on the continent. Managing them at your feeders is about protecting the cavity nesters they displace and the suet your woodpeckers need, not about the bird being worthless. The full sequence for a yard that is already overrun is in the starling problem guide.

Frequently asked questions#

How do I stop starlings taking all my suet?

Switch to an upside-down suet feeder, where the cake is held horizontally and can only be reached from underneath. Downy, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches and titmice all feed hanging inverted as a matter of course. Starlings can hover at it briefly but cannot hold the position long enough to feed properly, and they give up within a few days. Pair it with a firm pure-fat cake rather than a soft seed-and-grain blend, and remove any tail-prop panel, which is the surface a starling actually uses.

What is the difference between a starling and a grackle?

Tail length and eye color. A starling has a very short square tail, a pointed bill and a dark eye, and it looks almost tailless in flight with triangular pointed wings. A Common Grackle is bigger, with a long keel-shaped tail it holds in a V, a bright pale yellow eye and a heavier bill. On the ground, both walk rather than hop, but the grackle strides with its head up while a starling bustles and probes.

Why do starlings look spotted in winter and glossy in spring?

They do not molt into breeding plumage. They molt once, in late summer, into fresh feathers with white or buff tips, which is the heavily spotted winter bird. Through autumn and winter those pale tips simply wear off, and by spring what is left is the iridescent green-purple gloss underneath. The bill tracks the same cycle: dark gray-brown in winter, turning bright yellow as the breeding season starts, with a blue-gray base on males and pink on females.

Are starlings protected in the United States?

European Starlings are non-native and are not listed under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the law that protects almost every other bird at your feeder. That is a federal point only. State wildlife statutes, city ordinances, cruelty law and rules on trapping or firearms all still apply and vary a great deal. Check with your state wildlife agency before acting on the federal exemption. Everything recommended here is exclusion and food choice, which is legal everywhere and does not depend on that question.

Do starlings eat birdseed?

Some of it. They take sunflower hearts, cracked corn and shelled peanuts readily, and millet occasionally, but they largely ignore in-shell sunflower because they are poorly built for cracking hulls. They do not touch safflower or nyjer at all. That is the whole basis of a starling-resistant seed menu: in-shell black oil sunflower for the general crowd, safflower for cardinals and finches, nyjer for goldfinches, and no hearts, corn or loose peanuts in an open tray.

What is a murmuration?

A pre-roost aerial gathering, mostly from late autumn through winter. Starlings feed in small parties by day and converge at dusk on a communal roost in reedbeds, dense conifers, bridges or city structures. Before dropping in, the flock wheels in dense coordinated shapes, each bird tracking a handful of near neighbors rather than the flock as a whole. Local roosts can hold enormous numbers, and the birds arriving at your feeder in December are often commuting from one.

Sources and further reading

1. European Starling Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Identification, plumage cycle, introduced history and behavior
2. Discouraging Unwanted Feeder Visitors Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Feeder designs and foods that exclude large flocking birds
3. All About Birdhouses Cornell Lab of Ornithology, NestWatch Entrance hole dimensions by species
4. Migratory Bird Treaty Act Protected Species US Fish and Wildlife Service Which species the federal statute covers