New Bird Sighting?

One of my neighbors texted me a photo of a flock of birds in one of her recently-picked corn fields.  It was unfamiliar to her and she asked me for an identification.  All of which might have taken awhile had I not already fetched the SD cards from the trail cameras and was puzzling over a sequence of burst photos of a flock of birds myself.  These birds looked different to me too.

And eventually I figured it out.

Meet Sturnus vulgaris - the European Starling.

It is a non-native invader that was introduced to New York City in the late 1800s.  It has spread far and wide and is an annoying year-round resident in Wisconsin.  This avian gangster rousts other cavity nesting birds from their nests and destroys the eggs of more valuable native bird species.

I had always considered it a shiny purple-black bird of summer that is similar to the Common Grackle.  Identification changes seasonally with the plumage changing to white speckles and the ordinarily yellow bill changing to gray in the autumn and winter.

A partial migrator it will occasionally move to southern states for the winter and congregates in large flocks in the fall.

This bird is a shape-shifter.  ID solved!