Rome's Starlings

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/rome-starlings-birds-murmuration/

The birds are by turns mesmerizing and maddening

Story by Chico Harlan

and 

Stefano Pitrelli

ROME — This time of year in Rome, the evening sky is a marvel.

Just before sunset, there among the cupolas, starlings mass by the hundreds of thousands, performing an aerial dance. They dip and soar, bunch together and spread out. Seen from the ground, their ephemeral parabolas look like calligraphic brushstrokes.

But when the sun sets, the magic ends. The birds descend — and wreak havoc.

They spend their nights roosting, sometimes thousands to a tree and overloading the branches. They poop prolifically, and their droppings — thanks to their olive-heavy diet — are oily and slick. Those droppings can cause street closures and motorbike accidents. They can bury cars, bus stops, business awnings, even gravestones, under a Jackson Pollock coating of black and white.

“Abundant manure,” Rome’s environmental department called it in a report on the starlings.