Ethylene is manufactured and released by rapidly growing tissues (i.e., meristems) in roots, senescing flowers, and ripening fruit. For example, the darkened spots on a ripe banana release great amounts of ethylene. Ethylene has many effects on plants including being responsible for the stunting of plants in high winds or when repeatedly touched. In addition, ethylene promotes fruit ripening. Like many hormones, it does so at very low concentrations. Apple growers take advantage of this by picking fruit when it is not ripe, holding it in enclosed conditions without ethylene, and exposing it to ethylene right before taking it to market. This process is why we have newly ripened apples grown in temperate North America even in the spring and summer (apples ripen in the fall). This was gleened from a chemistry education site. This post was edited by Appleseed70 on Wed, Sep 10, 14 at 10:20

meek? OK. Last year there was a lovely woodpecker nest in a tree hollow in my yard not 50 feet from the back deck. We watched them feeding their babies hoping to see them finally take flight. The starlings found it. They would come in groups of ten or twenty and harass the woodpeckers literally harrying them dive bombing the nest to get the bird watching the nest to come out and defend. When it did others of the starlings would charge the nest. Eventually they had killed the baby woodpeckers and destroyed the nest and driven the parents away. They ate the baby woodpeckers. This is typical behavior for starlings. Starlings were imported by a deeply deranged man who was infatuated with Shakespeare and just absolutely had to import every bird mentioned in the bard's work to the new continent.

It is defiantly not a starling. I have two different ideas of what kind of bird it is. 1- it could be a baby cuckoo bird (úÃÂúÃÂÃÂúð) who got to big to fit trough the hole. On the other hand if the hole is to small for fledgling, it should also be to small for a female cuckoo bird to drop an egg in there. 2 - by the looks of it's head,it could be some kind of swift (ÃÂÃÂÃÂøö). I don't think a starling would raise/feed a swift, it's probably just roosting there. I would open the birdhouse anyway to see if the bird is OK and can fly out.

OW! I remember that kind of pain. I fell going down cement steps into the girls' locker room when I was in H.S. I remember that I almost fainted. That took some time to heal, even in a much younger body! Take it easy. Can someone else walk your dog for a while? You sure don't want to re-injure this now.