European starling

I live on a fairly big island, stuck off the NE coast of North America. European starlings didn't show up here until the mid-1940s and within five years they were being reported in the gigantic numbers we see everywhere, in their mumurations. Starting in my childhood, the 1950s, I heard them referred to as rats-of-the-air. People generally don't like them. But I was taken very early by those gigantic clouds of birds they form from time to time. And gradually I came to see how pretty they are individually. Nowadays they are one of my favourites.