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.

Lucky for me starlings are only an occasional problem in my yard. Hordes fly in, stay a week or so and vanish. When they come I use a recycled recycled plastic upside-down feeder like this: (from Suet Bird Feeders) I am loving the recycled plastic over wood, it's so easy to clean and you can even use bleach against mold. Don't think I haven't done a load of bird feeders in my dishwasher. BUT it's not perfectly starling proof - one starling will always figure it out. As an alternative I have a ground table feeder for starlings like this one: from Ground Table Bird Feeders. I use super cheap chicken feed cracked corn (was about $6 for a 50lb bag) and a super cheap millet/milo seed blend ($6 a 25lb bah) that I buy at a local feed store. The ground feeder is a lot easier for the starlings to use, plus they seem to prefer the corn food, so it at least keeps them busy and out of my other bird feeders to a great extent. They don't go through my pricey seed as fast. I've found offering starlings and grackle sort of birds alternative food works pretty well since they are going to be there no matter what I do. Jays also like the ground table.

The starlings randomly show up at my house too! I believe they send out scouts and when one locates food then the whole gang joins in. I wouldn't mind them so bad but they scare off my little beloved birds. I try to spook them when they really start going nuts. It has gotten so bad that I have taken down some feeders in the past. I also bought caged feeders so my finches can still eat. Unfortunately the cardinals can't fit in the caged feeders so they suffer too when the Starlings arrive in big numbers. I understand they have to eat too, but they are not meant to be here in the states.

I put out suet cakes to attract my little downy woodpeckers and their larger cousins the red bellied woodpeckers. In the last few days, starlings and grackles have discovered the suet cake dispensers and are eating them all up. And the little birds I enjoy which feed at my tubular mixed seed feeders are intimidated by this giants and leave until the intruders take their leave. Now that the suet feeders are empty from the starlings and grackles, they're not around. Should I just not fill the suet feeders for a few days and hope they don't come back? I miss my down woodpecker couple that feeds here daily.