By July the juveniles were ready for flying  and the whole flock left for parts unknown. These birds have typically followed this pattern in our yard for several years, even though they are considered to be year-round residents in our area.

March 20,2009 - A single European starling arrived on this day.  We saw him awkwardly perched on a suet feeder. He's the last of the official black birds to arrive this spring.  Normally we see him in the yard with robins looking for interesting food stuff there. I'm assuming he needed some quick, high energy food- thus the shaky pose on the small suet cage.  As days passed he found larger suet feeders. 

My first sighting of these astonishing looking birds was at our previous home.  I looked out of the back window and saw what must have been hundreds of shiny black birds with diamond like sparkles all over them.  They were pecking the lawn for grass and weed seeds.  Never having seen these birds before, they seemed like other-world creatures.  Funny that I never thought to research them at the time. While I didn't have the extensive bird library I have now, I did have the internet.

When I saw them in our new backyard, I quickly grabbed the camera for the pictures and then selected one of my favorite bird books (the one divided by color for easy look up).  Of course, the European Starling was easy to find with the black birds.

I read that they gather in the hundreds in autumn and although not really migrators, they will travel around together for food.  The birds I saw in my old backyard never appeared again. My new starlings stayed here for months before they too moved on.