the blackbirds

The day started out OK, but with murkiness and rain in the forecast—and a presentation to complete for presenting tonight—I figured that I'd best walk early. There's still plenty of snow on the ground and, in truth, it feels more like February than March, but I thought that the Red-winged Blackbirds might be back... finally... so I headed off to a pond by the local dairy farms that is often the first place the Red-wings ring with song and courtship displays. This wetland, however, remains locked in ice and snow—and completely empty. But on the wires above one of the cow barns, I heard, then saw, a flock of dark noisy birds. These are probably Starlings, those much maligned non-natives, about 60 of which were brought to this country at the end of the 19th century by a wealthy eccentric named Eugene Schieffelin and released in Central Park in an effort to populate North America with all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare. Those five dozen are now at least 150 million strong on this continent, and a good number flew overhead in a greeting unnervingly reminiscent of that Hitchcock film.