In America they are regarded as a plague.
Mozart adopted one and took it as a muse; over three years it became his friend and, maybe even, his collaborator; who really knows?
My wife and I were standing, to no apparent purpose, one recent sunny morning in Anacortes, with a roof overhanging us; I became aware of a complicated little wisp of music in the air; I looked up and saw a starling; it looked at me; I looked at it; it sang a song again - slightly different from the first one; I took it as a message.
One day I was walking through the Tuileries Garden, or whatever that long run of magic flint gravel north of the Louvre and before you get to Place de la Concorde is called, and I saw a starling, straddling a small log in a pool, looking into the past; "I wonder what it sees", I thought; I took it as a statement.
I took its picture.
I still don't know what it saw.
Or why so many love them and so many hate them.
Sociology, I guess.
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