Looking for some tips, tricks and experience on luring in starlings.

Go to McDonalds and buy a happy meal. Leave it in the bag and pitch out in the area you want to hunt. If they're anywhere in the area, they'll be all over it.

I set up my 30 yard range next to my compost pile. Ended up being a great place for bird feeders to aid in taking out sparrows and starlings. However, the starlings didn't seem to come around much till I added a couple of suet cake feeders. Starlings love suet and will continue visting as long as I keep suet out there. I keep a couple of cases of cheap suet as they will go thru alot of suet. I find like alot of critters that morning and evening are best, but tend to get shots at them throughout the day.

I use cat feed, suet also works great. I think there most active in the morning but they are extremely active in the winter at about an hour after the sun comes up. Also for bating them your going to want a good hide, them things aint blind!
Leo

I haven't had much luck in the summer and fall but in the winter (especially when it snows) suet has worked great for me. It seems to get a lot of them in the area through the spring, too.

They respond very well to decoys. The bird is an opportunist to the core.

http://www.knutsondecoys.com/decoy_misc/yard_decoys.html

I am going out and purchase more suet feeders... Put one out 
other day and those darn birds are all over it.... plus a decoy or two ain't going to hurt...
I hate those dang birds....

A cheap decoy is after you shoot the first one prop it back up and use it as the decoy. Works great

My house is surrounded by many tall trees, there aren't any open areas that I know starlings love. 
Does that mean I'm SOL?
My friend at the end of the street only has a few trees and her back yard back up to a wide open grass field, prime starling grounds!
...but she would kill me if I even look angry at a bird, starling or not. 

So do I have any chance of luring starlings under my partial canopy of huge trees, or do I need to find a distant farm to get permission to go after the pest? 

A sprinkler and some puddles can be a big help on a hot day. I found this out today.

Here is what I did growing up, much to my mothers distress. 

1. Shoot a couple of starlings by any normal means.
2. Sharpen a popsicle stick and jam it in the bird. Put in freezer in plastic bags.
3. Once frozen stick them in the yard as decoys and sprinkle some white bread around.
4. When the existing decoys become old just switch them out for the lastest kills.

They will come, I promise.

If you could only recreate a Walmart parking lot on your property...

My neighbor has a little farm with horses and a few chickens. There is a tree that the top of it is dead. The starlings love to sit on the top of the tree. It is a 35 yard shot. I shot 20 off that tree from his barn in 2 hours one day. The best time to shoot them was 1 hr before sun down and I got the most on a windy day with the wind to my back. I think they were stopping to take a break from the wind.

I've found that white bread, biscuits, sugar cookie, and bagels with raisins work well for me. I crumble it all up and throw it around my yard, and use my window that over looks the yard as a hide/shooters nest. I use this early morning to mid afternoon. At first sparrows will arrive, and you have to hold the urge to soot the sparrows if you really want to get those black devils.If you resit the sparrows they will acts as confidence boost to the starlings. The starlings will see the sparrows and come investigate; there will be one starling at first and resist to shoot this one too because after one starling is seen feeding safely the flood gates will open. I have used the first kill decoy method and it works very well in tandem with the method I use. That's what work for me in central Indiana, but try it out where you are and see if it works.

"CptMoonlight"If you could only recreate a Walmart parking lot on your property...

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Ain't that the truth. I live directly behind a Walmart but they won't come to the backside. The parking lot has hundreds at all times.

"frambonian"

"jakecrank99"A cheap decoy is after you shoot the first one prop it back up and use it as the decoy. Works great

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Lol. Yeah.....might have to buy 1 decoy to get at least one live one to fly in for additional decoy duty!

Set a dead one up next to the happy meal bag.
I noticed they tend to show up at a freshly mown yard looking for bugs.

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