Common starling
Control

Due to the impact of starlings on crop production, there have been attempts to control the numbers of both native and introduced populations of common starlings. Within the natural breeding range, this may be affected by legislation. For example, in Spain, the species is hunted commercially as a food item, and has a closed season, whereas in France, it is classed as a pest, and the season in which it may be killed covers the greater part of the year. In Great Britain, starlings are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which makes it "illegal to intentionally kill, injure or take a starling, or to take, damage or destroy an active nest or its contents". The Wildlife Order in Northern Ireland allows, with a general licence, "an authorised person to control starlings to prevent serious damage to agriculture or preserve public health and safety". The species is migratory, so birds involved in control measures may have come from a wide area and breeding populations may not be greatly affected. In Europe, the varying legislation and mobile populations mean that control attempts may have limited long-term results. Non-lethal techniques such as scaring with visual or auditory devices have only a temporary effect in any case.

Huge urban roosts in cities can create problems due to the noise and mess made and the smell of the droppings. In 1949, so many birds landed on the clock hands of London's Big Ben that it stopped, leading to unsuccessful attempts to disrupt the roosts with netting, repellent chemical on the ledges and broadcasts of common starling alarm calls. An entire episode of The Goon Show in 1954 was a parody of the futile efforts to disrupt the large common starling roosts in central London.

Where it is introduced, the common starling is unprotected by legislation, and extensive control plans may be initiated. Common starlings can be prevented from using nest boxes by ensuring that the access holes are smaller than the 1.5 in (38 mm) diameter they need, and the removal of perches discourages them from visiting bird feeders.

Western Australia banned the import of common starlings in 1895. New flocks arriving from the east are routinely shot, while the less cautious juveniles are trapped and netted. New methods are being developed, such as tagging one bird and tracking it back to establish where other members of the flock roost. Another technique is to analyse the DNA of Australian common starling populations to track where the migration from eastern to western Australia is occurring so that better preventive strategies can be used. By 2009, only 300 common starlings were left in Western Australia, and the state committed a further A$400,000 in that year to continue the eradication programme.

In the United States, common starlings are exempt from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibits the taking or killing of migratory birds. No permit is required to remove nests and eggs or kill juveniles or adults. Research was undertaken in 1966 to identify a suitable avicide that would both kill common starlings and would readily be eaten by them. It also needed to be of low toxicity to mammals and not likely to cause the death of pets that ate dead birds. The chemical that best fitted these criteria was DRC-1339, now marketed as Starlicide. In 2008, the United States government poisoned, shot or trapped 1.7 million birds, the largest number of any nuisance species to be culled. In 2005, the population in the United States was estimated at 140 million birds, around 45% of the global total of 310 million.

The likelihood of starlings to damage the feeding operations is dependent on the number of livestock, favoring areas with more livestock. They also show preference for feed types which were not whole corn but smaller feeds, creating more damage in areas where the feed was smaller. They also showed feed preference based on composition. A proposed solution to this problem is use of less palatable feed by agriculturalists, perhaps relying on larger feed types or feed which is less favorable in composition to starlings. An additional solution for mitigation control involves ensuring that livestock feeding operations are not within close proximity of each other or starling roosts. Weather conditions also had an impact on whether starlings visited livestock feeding operations, with a higher likelihood to visit in colder temperatures or following snow storms.

Alternatives to managing starling populations in agricultural areas include the use of starlicide. Use of starlicide has been found to reduce the spread of Salmonella enterica in livestock and other diseases found among livestock. Though this does not appear to eliminate introduction of these diseases completely, it has been determined that they are contributors and starling control is a successful mitigation strategy.
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