Each day at dusk since mid-November, thousands of starlings The birds have been likened to flying rats, and their Starlings from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Boston’s legendary, ongoing celebration of incompetence, malfeasance and the art of the bureaucratic boondoggle, otherwise known as the Big Dig, has enlivened the lives of locals for over ten years now. Beguiled by the cost overruns (to the tune of $10 … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/starrlings.jpg\")
Boston’s
\n legendary, ongoing celebration of incompetence, malfeasance and the
\n art of the bureaucratic boondoggle, otherwise known as the Big Dig,
\n has enlivened the lives of locals for over ten years now. Beguiled
\n by the cost
\n overruns (to the tune of $10 BILLION), insider contracts, missed deadlines
\n (over 100 years, cumulatively) constant multiple arterial
\n bypasses, a slowly devolving urban eyesore, daily delays
\n and traffic bottlenecks, and recently, hundreds of leaks threatening
\n its stability, we often overlook the marvelous secondary effects of
\n this gargantuan project. Take, for example,
\n the thousands of starlings displaced by the razing of their ancestral
\n roosts in the skeletal superstructure of the old Green Line station
\n and tracks running past North Station and the Fleet Center…<\/em><\/p>\n
\n swarm toward the cornices, ledges, and fire escapes of the area’s historic
\n buildings, where they roost. When they fly away at dawn, the birds leave
\n behind a mess: Awnings, signs, and sidewalks are covered with bird droppings.<\/p>\n
\n calls compared to the screech of nails on a schoolroom blackboard. Sixty
\n of the medium-size, black-feathered scavengers were introduced to the
\n United States in the 1890s by a man who wanted to populate Central Park
\n with every bird species mentioned in William Shakespeare’s plays. Within
\n 20 years, flocks of 100,000 starlings soared through North American skies.<\/p>\n
\n and Massachusetts have had a long and somewhat contentious relationship.
\n Officials at Logan Airport began an extensive
\n bird-control program after a flock of starlings was sucked into a jet’s
\n engines in 1960, causing the plane to crash, killing 62 people on board.
\n After starlings repeatedly fouled two statues of James Michael Curley
\n in a Congress Street park, the city replaced the park’s zelkova trees.<\/p>\n