Starlings, Synapses, and the Smallness of the Real World

What matters is those closest to you

Photo by Pete Godfrey on Unsplash

Sometimes the sky goes crazy.

It’s almost always sunny where I live, but it gets quiet in winter. The city workers hack back the thick branches of the trees, leaving them standing like ruined wooden columns of some forgotten temple on either side of the street. The gulls live here year-round, chasing fishing boats from the sea up the narrow canal to the port in shrieking clouds, but the darting swifts that are the sound of spring and summer around here, that chase the swarming mosquitoes and live and die on the wing, head for warmer places.

The starlings come and go, too. Mostly seen only at the start and end of summer, like today, when I stepped out of my back door to hear them warbling and chattering unseen behind the dry brown leaves of the trees, right on the edge of falling. Leaving relief maps of crusted black droppings on the roof and windows of any car reckless enough to park underneath them.

For that reason and some others, starlings aren’t always welcome. But I have a soft spot for them.

Along the banks of the river in Rome, they settle in noisy clouds into the plane trees at dusk. Above the domed churches of the city, they swirl and shift like inky fingerprints on the sky…