European rabbits have annexed a coastal resort,
starlings now soar in military formation.
These alien populations
are staking their claim to a new world.
On the jagged coast
of Canada's Eastern Shore.
A delicate and diverse ecosystem
thrives on the fringes of the continent.
Welcome
to the Wild, Wild East.
NARRATOR: The story of European explorers
arriving on these shores is well known.
But what about the animals that came with them?
European starlings have increased their population
a million-times over since their introduction
to North America by lovers of Shakespeare.
Today they form massive murmurations
that hang like clouds in the North American sky.
Scientists call animals like starlings
invasive species.
Introduced wildlife,
whose success in new territories
impacts native species,
and alters their new environment.
These aren't just stories of conquest.
How do invasive species like starlings
adapt to life in their adopted habitat?
It's the beginning of spring.
The warm air fights back against the cold,
but still, patches of snow remain.
Bird feeders like this,
intended for native chickadees and finches,
also help European starlings
survive the harsh winter of the Wild Wild East.
This one has already begun
to adorn its breeding plumage.
Its bright yellow bill
and glossy green and purple feathers,
entice the opposite sex.
This is a male,
you can tell by the long scraggly feathers on his breast.
This is a female,
she has shorter breast feathers
and a sleeker appearance.
Males attract mates with their song.
And will shadow females
as they go about their daily activities.
This looks like an attack,
but it's actually two starlings mating.
Starlings breed in early spring,
surrounded by the last signs of winter.
Like most birds the act happens on the ground.
They rub together a combined urinary,
digestive and reproductive opening called a cloaca,
which swells during the mating season
to transfer sperm from male to female.
Once Starlings have mated,
they stay together and spend the rest of the season
caring for their young.
When the spring air finally conquers winter's snow,
Huge numbers of European starlings
swarm fields just like this one.
The parents are looking for earthworms,
centipedes and other invertebrates
to feed themselves and their newly hatched chicks.
Starlings have an amazing technique for unearthing prey.
Their jaw's musculature is wired in reverse.
Its strength comes when opening their beak,
not clenching it together.
This allows them to easily excavate the ground.
Confined to the nest,
a clutch of 4 to 7 chicks eagerly awaits its next meal.
Starlings are secondary cavity nesters.
They make their home in pre-existing
cracks and crevices,
invading a woodpecker's hole,
or occupying a man-made nest-box.
One of the keys to starlings' success
in the new world is that they're devoted parents.
Both parents spend all their time and energy
feeding the chicks until they're ready to fledge,
three weeks after birth.
On Nova Scotia's South Shore,
White Point Beach Resort houses
one of the world's most successful invaders,
A creature that has conquered
every continent except Antarctica.
The European rabbit.
Rabbits came to be known as bunnies,
because their tails look like a bun,
the Gaelic word for a bread roll.
Along with those tails,
European rabbits share their large ears
and strong hind legs
with 60 other species of leporidae.
European rabbits, by far,
are the most populous and widespread members
of that mammalian family.
That's because their broad diet
and rapid reproductive rate
makes them highly adaptable.
But it's also because
they've got a long history with humans.
These fluffy conquistadors
are native to Spain and Portugal,
but have travelled across the world with people.
First as a food source, but more recently as a pet.
These rabbits are the same species
many keep as furry companions.
In parts of the world with fewer predators
and tamer winters, invasive rabbit populations
have exploded exponentially.
These alien intruders' massive populations
can devastate native flora and fauna,
impacting the biodiversity of these areas.
In Australia, 24 European rabbits released in 1859
grew to 600 million
in less than a century.
On Canada's more temperate west coast,
an exploding population
at the University of Victoria in British Columbia
led to 900 rabbits being trapped, neutered
and taken to shelters as far away as Texas.
The outbreak here at White Point Resort
in Nova Scotia began as
a bunny-sitting experiment gone wrong.
More than two decades ago,
a staff member was taking care of 2 or 3 rabbits
in the resort's boathouse.
They escaped, and the population grew.
The colony has been here for more than 20 years now.
The average population holding steady
at 30 rabbits.
That's because Mother Nature
has a hand in population control.
The surrounding woods are full of predators,
and every year the winter
devastates the colony's numbers.
In order to survive, the White Point Beach rabbits
need to rely on their wild instincts.
100 miles up the Nova Scotia coast
in the city of Halifax,
a stretch of boardwalk traces the waterfront.
Here you'll find locals, tourists
and European starlings.
Like humans,
starlings are omnivores with an expansive diet,
so they're commonly found around people and cities.
The hatchlings born last spring
are beginning to resemble their parents,
except for their dull brown heads
and petite appearance.
At the end of the breeding season
all starlings adopt a drab plumage,
and a matching black beak.
Starlings are incredibly intelligent birds,
with exceptional skills as mimics.
Their mimicry even caught the attention of Mozart,
who taught one to sing
his Piano Concerto in G Major.
It also inspired William Shakespeare
to write them into one of his plays,
Henry IV, Part One.
It was pen stroke
that changed the bird's fate forever.
In 1890, a group called the American Acclimation Society
wanted to introduce all the birds in the bard's plays
to the New World.
At the time, the concept of a potentially harmful
"invasive species" was unknown,
and the group thought the introductions
would add a European flare to North America.
One hundred European starlings
were shipped from England and set free in Central Park.
Since then, the population has exploded.
There are 200 million European starlings
in North American today,
and they've colonized the sky
from Tijuana to Alaska.
The American Acclimation Society initiated the starling invasion
but it was widespread changes
to the landscape of North America
at the turn of the 20th century
that paved the way for the starling's expansion.
Clear-cutting opened up new territories
for these lowland birds.
The growth of the agricultural industry
resulted in more cultivated fields of grain
and other plants that attract the insects
starlings like to eat.
Now starlings have become a major pest on farmlands.
Modern cities provided new nesting locations
and food sources.
Starlings have also moved into other bird's nests.
Few North American immigrants
benefited more from the Industrial Age
than the European starling.
Back along Nova Scotia's south shore
at White Point Resort, it's summer time,
the peak of tourist season.
But while the visitors enjoy the cabins above,
the rabbits annex the territory below.
European rabbits are herbivores
and will eat almost any vegetation they can reach.
They're mixed feeders,
browsing shrubs for leaves, fruits or buds,
and also grazing on grass.
European rabbits are a gregarious bunch,
living in tight social units called warrens
that consist of up to 10 individuals.
The warren is also the name
of the elaborate network of tunnels
that connect the burrows rabbits dig.
A trip down the rabbit hole
reveals the hidden world of rabbits.
This maze of tunnels
reaches ten feet underground,
and spreads across 2,000 square feet.
The warren is the center of their colony at the resort.
It's also where females give birth,
in the burrows underground,
competing with other does for the best nesting sites,
then marking them with their powerful urine.
Throughout the warren there are separate areas
for urinating or defecating,
sleeping, and rearing babies.
Each warren can house a colony of up to 10 rabbits.
Burrows offer a refuge from danger
so rabbits don't venture far from their warren.
Like most prey animals,
rabbits are extremely vigilant.
Their eyes are positioned high on their head
so they can see avian predators,
like eagles flying above.
If a rabbit is stressed, its nose twitches frantically,
sensing the air for any nearby predators, like foxes.
The twitch increases the olfactory receptors'
exposure to airborne particles,
so the rabbit knows when the fox has moved on.
Their iconic ears are like two giant antennae
on the top of their heads
intercepting sound waves from every direction.
With danger lurking around each corner,
this rabbit knows if it senses
an American mink watching from the woods,
It had better run.
Rabbits' best defenses are quickness and agility.
Rabbits can reach an impressive
36 miles per hour
and can rapidly pivot in new directions
to escape predators.
When there are no nearby threats,
rabbits practice their evasion skills
by chasing each other.
They have specially padded feet
to absorb the shock of running and jumping.
Prey animals sustain great losses,
only 10% of bunnies make it through their first year.
But rabbits have another adaptation
that ensures their success,
and it's earned them quite the reputation.
Rabbits can mate four times in one year.
After giving birth, does immediately enter estrus.
Mating actually induces ovulation in females.
So a doe can be pregnant
for up to eight straight months,
a continuous cycle of pregnancy, birth
and then pregnancy again.
Each doe can birth
between 30 and 40 kits annually.
Up to 12 kits are born at a time
in fur-lined nests inside the warren.
They're altricial, deaf, blind, hairless
and 100% dependent on their mother.
Their mother only nurses her kits
for a few minutes each day.
The nutrient-rich milk
can sustain the young for 24 hours,
so the mother visits her kits infrequently,
which reduces a predator's attention to the warren.
In a month's time, the babies will leave the warren.
They will fend for themselves,
evading predators and fighting to survive
against the devilish winter ahead.
By the time the fall leaves begin to show,
the starlings born this past spring
will have reached breeding age themselves.
The population reaches its peak
just before the onslaught of winter.
This time of year,
the already gregarious group grows even larger.
For this nearby peregrine falcon,
an individual starling
could make a satisfying supper.
But a mob of starlings has many eyes,
and many look outs.
The defense begins with just one individual,
then it grows,
and grows.
The falcon's overwhelmed by the numbers
and can't pinpoint an individual.
In some places these murmurations
can consist of over a thousand birds,
all moving in concert with each other.
When one shifts directions,
they all follow.
An aerial ballet.
Each bird is watching seven others.
The movement of one spreads across a flock
the length of a football field,
in a fraction of a second.
The individual shifts
are too quick for the human eye.
The flock appears to move with one mind.
Theoretical physicists recorded murmurations
with high-speed cameras,
then used computers to model the starlings' movements.
Amazingly, the results show these undulating clouds
closely resemble the movement
of avalanches and waves,
patterns in movement that scientists associate
with state-of-the-art physics.
Still, no one knows exactly how information
whizzes through the flock like lightning.
It's truly an awesome natural phenomenon.
Winter on the North Atlantic coast
is brutal for wildlife.
Plummeting temperatures,
unpredictable weather,
and very little food to go around.
It's enough to stop most invaders
before they can even gain a foothold
in new territories.
The cold season ravages the rabbits
at White Point Resort by imposing a natural cull.
At this time of year,
rabbits use most of their energy to stay warm.
By January their population at the resort
typically falls from 80,
the summer-time peak,
to just 30.
In Nova Scotia the winters do the job
of population control,
with a little help from a native predator
in the nearby woods,
The American mink hunts all year,
and the winter's hard on this carnivorous member
of the weasel family too.
Snatching one of the young rabbits
would help it survive until spring.
Rabbits hide from minks in the warren,
most of the day,
but must come out to find food.
Normally, their winter diet
consists heavily of tree bark.
It's tough to digest, so,
to extract every last nutrient,
they actually eat their poop after defecating,
and send it through their gut several times over.
Luckily for these rabbits,
the resort is open year-round.
Inside, the workers are busy
preparing a meal for the rabbits.
A little extra food sprinkled along the pathways
helps some of the bunnies survive until next spring.
It's a win-win situation.
The bunnies get a leg-up they wouldn't otherwise have.
And come spring,
the rabbits will help draw in flocks of tourists.
Meanwhile, the starlings also take advantage
of people's generosity in the winter
by dominating bird feeders.
Many people leave out grain and seeds
thinking they're helping shepherd blue jays
and chickadees through the long winter months,
unaware they're actually bolstering
the starling population.
Starlings' aggressive feeding and nesting patterns
make them frequent scapegoats
for the decline of avian populations
across North America.
It's widely believed that starlings
displace their New World cousins
by outcompeting them for food and nesting locations.
But the jury's still out on this.
Most evidence is more anecdotal than scientific.
Starlings aren't as much of a problem for other birds,
as they are for people,
who accuse them of being messy, noisy and greedy.
It may have been human intervention
that brought European starlings to North America,
but their success here is the consequence
of their resourcefulness and intelligence.
Invasive species may have already changed
the North American wild.
But ecologists claim that the idea
of an unchanging balanced ecosystem
is an illusion.
Nature is always in flux.
And the new order of things
will change again tomorrow.
European starlings have made an indelible mark
on the North American sky.
But the most recent data suggests
their numbers have begun to level off.
And while European rabbit outbreaks
may run rampant elsewhere,
at least Mother Nature
controls the population along Nova Scotia's coast.
The invaders have been granted citizenship
in the Wild Wild East.
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