An ugly acting bird, but quite stunning

I took this image in my backyard when he landed on a pole. I was taken by his beauty, even though I don't like them as a specie. Any comments will be greatly appreciated. Shooting specs follows:
Nikon D3S
2011:09:20 16:29:42
600mm
600mm (in 35mm film)
Subject dist: 7.5m
1/800 sec, f/5
Mode: Manual
Metering: Multi-segment
ISO: 800
White balance: Cloudy
Flash: Off
File size: 149MB
Image size: 1920 x 2400
Color space: AdobeRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Color profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

A super pose from the bird with loads of detail on the feathers finished off with a great back-ground... Nice one :S3:
Maybe a small CCW rotation to bring the perch in a vertical position

very nice! I like the pose and BG nice details too. bummer about the perch, whites in the chest look blown. TFS

European starling Google European Starling it is as serious invasive species

Wheeler:

Good comments above. Lots of interesting detail in the bird, nice background.

Might want to put out a different perch for them.

Yes, hate the invasion, but the individual bird is attractive.

Cheers

Randy

Agree with above points.

Sadly for you the bird is an invasive species (we have a good few of them from the USA). Sadly this bird is declining in numbers in England. It is loved by many not only for its superb plumage but its character.

Yes these guys can be quite striking. Nice background and details. Tail, undertail coverts, and primaries look like the sharpest parts of the bird and I wish you had been more to your left for a better body angle on this fella.

beautiful sharp bird. we call em Common Starling and its no way ungly we call rather the most striking bird :)

i like the lighting here and clean bg. perch yeah may be fore next time :) too much space on top.

Lovely image of this striking bird, sharp and colours are good against that BG. I might consider a pano comp as an alternative.

Bird and head are angled slightly away resulting in the head being not as sharp as the rest. Nice BKGR.

How can a bird be ugly acting? It did not choose to be introduced in NA. All that it has ever been doing is doing its best and doing quite well at that.

Thank you all for your thoughts and opinions. I guess I agree with Arthur, it's not the birds fault. I can remember when I was a child living in a small town of Washington, IL and in the summers great flocks of European Starling would fly into town and roost in the trees, making a grat deal of noise. They would stay around for weeks at a time. The local residents would try all kinds of things to get rid of them, such as water canons, shot guns, etc. Nothing seemed to help very much. One day they would just lift up and leave. They were quite a sight. I don't think I I have seen them do this in the past 40 years at least. Does anyone know whether there are fewer of them now than then.
Mac

Population is stable in NA at about 200,000 million all descended from 60-100 birds released in New York City's Central Park in 1890.

From the Cornell site:

"Starlings often take over the nests of native birds, expelling the occupants. With so many starlings around, this causes some concern about their effect on native bird populations. Nevertheless, a study in 2003 found few actual effects on populations of 27 native species. Only sapsuckers showed declines due to starlings; other species appeared to be holding their own against the invaders."