Birding by Book is a book club for those who love birds AND books! The club meets to discuss selected book titles and create community among birders in the Pikes Peak area.

Read Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird by Mike Stark at your leisure, then join us on Monday, October 19th for book club discussion.

Named a 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Fourth Place for the Arizona Authors Association Literary Award

Has there ever been a more hated bird than the European starling? Let loose in New York City’s Central Park by a misguided aristocrat, the starlings were supposed to help curb insect outbreaks and add to the tuneful choir of other songbirds. Rather than staying put, the dark and speckled starlings marched across the continent like a conquering army. In less than sixty years, they were in every state in the contiguous United States and their numbers topped two hundred million. Cities came under siege; crops buckled beneath their weight. Public sentiment quickly soured.

A bitter, baffling, and sometimes comical war on starlings ensued. Weapons included dynamite, guns, bounties, fake owls, real owls, rubber snakes, balloons, itching powder, and greased building ledges. Still, artists and scientists marveled at their undulating aerial formations, which seemed equal parts poetry and mathematics. Keen listeners recognized the starling as one of the world’s great vocal mimics, imitating everything from fellow birds and cell phones to barking dogs, car alarms, and TV commercials. And then there were their undeniable skills of adaptation and survival. What if there was more to these stubborn villains than once thought?

Mike Stark’s Starlings is a first-of-its-kind history of starlings in America, an oddball, love-hate story at the intersection of human folly, ornithology, and one bird’s tenacious will to endure.

Roadrunner Bookshop is offering new copies of Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird at a 15% discount to book club members. Please email your request to place an order along with your RSVP.

Seating is LIMITED, and a reservation is required.
RSVP by emailing BirdingByBook@gmail.com.

photo credit: University of Nebraska Press