During a recent visit to the NGA sculpture garden the people sitting at a table next to me vacated. A small flock of birds immediately lit on the table, chairs, and surrounding shrubbery. As I focused on one of the birds with unusual markings, I wondered what species it was. As I took the whole flock into consideration, I realized it was a family of European Starlings. As I watched their activity with growing interest (I'm not attracted to starlings) and watched one of the parents feeding from the leftovers on the table and how the juveniles responded to and mimicked their parents behavior, an internal light bulb went off in my head when I remembered the White-breasted Nuthatch family that fed at our feeders last year. Those parents had brought their youngsters to our feeders too. The parent(s) would eat the seed and regurgitate to the mouth of their offspring. Over the course of the next few months the youngsters also learned to eat directly from the feeders. Fast forward: this is exactly what the starlings were doing: teaching their offspring to eat from our scraps. I shared their behavior with some Smithsonian staff also seated in the area who were greatly amazed not only to witness this behavior but also whole-heartly thanked me for sharing these observations, as they left. While it seemed at first a Kodak moment, I was later a bit saddened as I think about the impact our human behavior has on wildlife.

Last thought: while the number of breeding or local birds at our feeders in our backyard was down this year, I am happy to say that a family of Titmice taught their young to eat suet and seed, rather than scraps of pizza and chicken.