Discuss: Murmurations

-What unexpected pleasure, voyeuristically observing starlings thru another’s eye, (and ears). I can’t wait to go out and find a flock of them to watch, and listen to; just being aware, how rare it is in my life.

Exquisite writing.  Like Dorothy, I am heading for the starlings, wherever they may be found.  And I will listen for their voices.  Recently heard about birds in an area where logging is occuring and where these mynah-related birds imitate the sound of trees falling and chainsaws.

Great essay!  I never appreciated their ability to mimic sounds before—now I’ll be sure to listen for them. I loved the story about Mozart.

Not many people know about this.
Here is something I wrote down couple years ago about a starling outside the bedroom window. It was so amazing I wanted to share it, but who would care?

“Really listening for the first time, I was amazed.  In a nonstop medley of burbles, whistles, ratchets, and countless other sounds, I began to notice exact impersonations inserted as short, discrete segments in the overall flow of sound.

In the approximate order of frequency, I heard renditions of:

Hawk
Magpie
Grackle
Ambulance Siren
Kitty Cat
Goose
Robin
Duck
Fire Truck Siren
Kildeer
Gull

The first two in particular were repeated fairly often-the plaintive cry of the hawk from Western movies and the noisy but articulate squawk of the magpie.  All were perfectly precise.  If I recorded them, no one would know that the individual sounds in the list were anything but the real thing.

In between the sounds I recognized, I suspect some of the “filler” sounds were also impersonations, because they were so distinct.  But I just don’t know enough to recognize them.  Anyone know what I’m talking about?  I wonder if this happens often and we don’t listen, or if I was lucky to be in a right place at a right time.”

You know what I’m talking about!

Your article really has piqued my curiosity.

Did Mozart actually call his pet Vogel Star ?- I mean, is that a name or a description ?- Those two words (taking into consideration the initial capital letters characteristic of German nouns) simply translate as “starling bird” (and it’s spelled Vogel Staar). They appear in the little Trauergedicht or versified eulogy which the disconsolate composer penned after his bird had expired, rung down the curtain and joined the Choir Invisible :

Hier ruht ein lieber Narr,
Ein Vogel Staar.
Noch in den besten Jahren
Mußt er erfahren
Des Todes bittern Schmerz.

[My translation, may it please :]
Here lies a little clown,
My starling bird.
‘Tis in the flow’r of Art
That he must now depart
To taste Death’s bitter rue.

Five years ago in a commemorative percussion concerto entitled “Das war schön!” (employing Mozart’s own compliment to his bird), the modern Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin paid musical tribute to the master and his pet. Wallin took it upon himself to refer to the creature as “a starling named Herr Stahr” (a seeming presumption which was then parrotted by The Juilliard Journal, Der General-Anzeiger Bonn, and Steve Smith’s music review of February 20, 2008, in The New York Times). Again, doesn’t this supposed name just mean “Mr Starling” in German ?

These flights of fancy will not do, I think. Attestation looks inadequate-to-nil for such an onomastic leap, and I don’t believe Maynard Solomon’s Mozart biography gives any name.
I have searched for an answer, and so I ask Orion readers : What did Mozart name his pet starling ?