Free Things To Do In Rome: Starlings Play Target Practice

Once upon a time there went an old saying:

A Starling a day keeps the worm away.
A thousand Starlings a day keeps EVERYONE away.

Here in Rome, the latter has never been so true as the Starlings take to the skies each evening around sunset and dance a mesmerizing flight, erratic and yet fluid.  They are fascinating to watch, never knowing which direction they fly and when they will change their course.  However, beauty can easily disguise a monster.

I don't think this is a starling, but it was the closest photo of a wild bird I was able to take while living out here.

You can search online today and very easily find articles from 2008 or earlier discussing the problems with the birds.

The issue that has persisted for years and years is that in the fall and winter months, these birds come out of their trees and join together for this dance.  More specifically, during this dance as any pet owner might know, their bodies which were previously inactive, become active and with more motion and blood circulating in their bodies, their metabolic rates are boosted and their internal organs work their magic resulting in a natural production of what we scientists like to call a bowel movement.

And when you have thousands, no.  Hundreds of thousands of starlings in the sky at one single time with overactive bladders, what you get is a mess.

Hey what are all those specks in the sky?  Better zoom in.

This photo does not do my post justice.  My camera isn't that great, and they moved around way too much. And they were all over the sky, not just right there. 

Apparently in the past the birds caused enough damage to the outdoor Roman art to make the government attempt to stop them.  Today and for the last several years, an agency has been given an annual budget to use loudspeakers when the masses come out for a dance and play starling distress calls.  From the articles I have read, particularly this one, this method has significantly reduced the number of birds that once danced with the sunset.

To give you a better idea of what I saw, here's a picture from someone else on a different day.

Source

Make sure you come out to Rome and watch some of these amazing flight patterns.  Bird watching can be fun.  It's one of the many Free Things To Do In Rome.  And taking a little risk that you might be a target makes life just a little more interesting!