Starlings Dark and Speckled

New birds at our suet cage this afternoon and evening -- European Starlings -- three or four of them, squabbling over the suet, swinging back and forth on the wire cage.
European Starlings are an invasive species -- 100 of them were introduced into Central Park in New York in the 1890s by a group of people who wanted to introduce North America to all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. All the starlings found in North America are believed to be descended from those first 100. The birds can be fierce and quite competitive, and it has been suggested that they may be the reason, in part, for the diminishing numbers of native birds.

For more info on starlings or other birds, visit All About Birds (I love this site).

And we're also getting blue jays -- they sure look huge compared to our tiny songbirds.