[NatureNS] Starling Mimicry

Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 14:55:59 -0400
From: "Frederick W. Schueler" <bckcdb@istar.ca>
Organization: Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100802
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca
References: <4DE27DAD.8080401@bogan.ca>
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <naturens-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>
Original-Recipient: rfc822;"| (cd /csuite/info/Environment/FNSN/MList; /csuite/lib/arch2html)"

next message in archive
no next message in thread
previous message in archive
previous message in thread
Index of Subjects

Index of Subjects
On 5/29/2011 1:09 PM, Larry Bogan wrote:
> Yesterday, while at the Kings County Airport (Waterville), I heard a
> killdeer and looked for it on the roof of a hanger, only to find a
> starling.

* This is a fascinating subject, which, like war, is 99% broken glass 
and 1% data. I've appended recent records of listening for Starling 
mimicry of frog calls, motivated by an attempt to understand 
extra-limital records of calling frogs. These records present some 
reflections on how Starlings mimic, especially that they often give only 
one or two repetitions of a call.

fred schueler
------------------------------------------------------------
          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
now in the field on the Thirty Years Later Expedition -
http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
     RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------

4 April 2005: Canada: Ontario: Grenville County: Oxford-on-Rideau: 
Bishops Mills General Store. (100m ard homesite), 31B/13, 44.87282N 
75.70097W TIME: 1740. AIR TEMP: 3, light rain, windy. OBSERVER: 
Frederick W. Schueler. 2005/030/b, Sturnus vulgaris (Starling) (Bird). 
1/common call, heard, seen. mimicked Pseudacris crucifer (Spring Peeper) 
in 1 series of clear calls among the ordinary broken-glass Starling 
song. In the top of a tree behind the Store.

Starlings are under-rated as mimics because they so often mimic a sound 
only once, and then go back to broken glass. In listening for 
before-the-frogs mimicry of Peepers and Treefrogs, I've had to train 
myself to react to and record a single instance. Usually you expect a 
call to be repeated, and only 'really hear' the second or third 
instance. In this case the Starling was starling along, and then gave 
5-6 pretty good Peeper peeps, and then resumed its normal song. If I'd 
been in my usual "did I really hear that" mode I'd have listened for a 
repetition, not heard it, and gone on with unloading the car.

5 April 2008: Canada: Ontario: Grenville County: Bishops Mills:S 
side(Schuelers). (100m ard homesite), 44.87156N 75.70095W TIME: 1349. 
AIR TEMP: 8.5, sunny, calm. HABITAT: rural village, shallow soil 
limestone plain. OBSERVER: Frederick W. Schueler. FWS08Apr051349/a, 
Sturnus vulgaris (Starling) (Bird). 1/common call, heard. mimicked 
emerging Pseudacris crucifer in 4 series of calls among the ordinary 
broken-glass Starling song. Not actually seen while singing. These were 
the scratchy sort of calls given by Peepers before they've really gotten 
into calling, not the clear calls from a full chorus. There's about 
20-25 cm of heavy wet snow on the ground.

25 April 2009: Canada: Ontario: Grenville County: Bishops Mills:S 
side(Pipers House Garden). (30m garden), 44.87147N 75.70045W TIME: 
1213-1216. AIR TEMP: 26, cloudy, windy. HABITAT: untilled 
raised(heaped)garden bed, rural village, shallow soil limestone plain. 
OBSERVER: Frederick W. Schueler. FWS09Apr251213/c, Sturnus vulgaris 
(Starling) (Bird). 1/common call, heard. mimicking Snipe ground call - 
but only once.

18 March 2010: (at home) TIME: 1250. AIR TEMP: 15 ca, sunny, calm. 
HABITAT: rural village, shallow soil limestone plain. OBSERVER: 
Frederick W. Schueler. 2010/023/b, Sturnus vulgaris (Starling) (Bird). 
1/several call, heard. single Hyla versicolor call in course of singing. 
This was a strikingly clear Hyla versicolor (Tetraploid Gray Treefrog) 
call, but it was also very clearly not repeated -- this is 
characteristic of Starling mimicry.

31 March 2010: Canada: Ontario: Grenville County: Bishops Mills:S 
side(Schuelers Transparent tree). (25m waypoint), 44.87156N 75.70059W 
TIME: 1600-1822. AIR TEMP: 16, sunny, breezy. HABITAT: grassy/shaded 
backyard in rural village on shallow-soil limestone plain. OBSERVER: 
Aleta Karstad Schueler. 2010/033/gb, Sturnus vulgaris (Starling) (Bird). 
1/common call, heard. 4 Hyla versicolor mimicked calls in a series.

17 March 2011: (at home) TIME: 1235. AIR TEMP: 8.5, sunny, breezy. 
HABITAT: rural village, shallow soil limestone plain. OBSERVER: 
Frederick W. Schueler. FWS11Mar171235/a, Sturnus vulgaris (Starling) 
(Bird). 1/many call, heard. 2 sketchy phoebe calls in the same tone as 
regular calls. I heard these, and at first thought they might be a 
Phoebe, since it was such characteristic Phoebe-returning weather 
(though no flying Insects are out yet). But since there were no more 
Sayornis-like calls, it must have been a just-before Starling mimicry.

------------------------------------------------------------
EOBase Narrative - beginning 4 April 2005. - filtered by NAME="Sturnus 
".AND.("mimic"$LOWER(TEXT).OR."mimic"$LOWER(REMARKS))

next message in archive
no next message in thread
previous message in archive
previous message in thread
Index of Subjects