Early one January, awakened by my gestating daughter's kicks, I looked out the living room window searching for black-capped chickadees, a northern flicker, a great blue heron. My daughter seemed to want to come into the world as much as I wanted to leave the empty days of a doctor-ordered bed-rest. In a reprieve before I had to lie down, I searched the grey Seattle sky for beautiful birds, for wild birds, for native birds that would remind me that my home was part of a larger world.

     Instead, I saw starlings. A flock of the small, pointy-winged birds swooped between Saturn's and SUVS, flew over my lavender, hovered above the rosemary bushes, and then clustered like sentries on telephone lines. 

     As a nature writer and birdwatcher, I'm supposed to hate the starling, aka the sky rat. I admit I'd had moments when I would admire the golden glint of their short beaks or the iridescent green and purple flecks along their black wings.  But usually I ignored starlings when I wasn't scorning them as an invasive species.  Starlings aren't native to the United States but were released in New York City in 1890 as part of an effort to bring all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's oeuvre to North America. Now 200 million starlings can be found in habitats ranging from suburban backyards to city downtowns eating everything from insects to garbage to seeds. The starling population grows, while wrens, flickers, and other native birds dwindle as they wrestle nesting sites, food or other resources from the aggressive newcomers.   

     But that morning, I forgot to hate starlings. My hands held a cup of green tea, my bare feet tapped the wood floor, and my imagination flew through a sky of “what if…” and “where to …” Pregnancy had become confinement. I had watched my husband go to work, book clubs, dances, movies while I had lain flat waiting for another day, another week, another month to pass.  My world had narrowed to my laptop and the view from our windows.  

      The starlings alighted to front yards and winter grass, but I was aloft with joy. Why had I never felt that in the many times I'd seen starlings? True, I'd been bored by the everyday sight of them. I'd grown so used to invasive species being called aliens, exotics, foreigners that all I thought of was crazed invaders storming nature's gates. But didn't all species evolve on earth's common ground? Didn't that give me an evolutionary kinship with starlings? With that realization, I saw starlings as if for the first time. They flew around my neighbor's apple trees embodying the freedom all birds have to explore our world alongside kin and companion. Soon I would have the freedom to walk in the world the starlings flew through. I would not be alone, either, for my daughter would be exploring with me.  

      The starlings rose, turned as one, hovered, flew up the street, crested the hill, and were gone.