SHAKESPEARE’S BIRDS

The European Starling

We meddle. Apparently we can’t resist. Consider Eugene Schieffelin, the amiable lunatic I mentioned yesterday who is so often accused of trying to bring all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare to America. Although there’s some question about his Shakespearean connection, there’s no doubt that he kidnapped his share of birds and dragged them across the Atlantic. As a member of the American Acclimatization Society, it was his duty, after all. The Society’s goal was to introduce to America “such foreign varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdom as may be useful or interesting.” We know now what a bad idea that was. You won’t be surprised to learn that the American Acclimatization Society went quietly extinct long ago.

Schieffelin is usually blamed for bringing us the English sparrow (we now call it the house sparrow). He had less luck with skylarks, nightingales, chaffinches, and bullfinches, none of which survived acclimatization. Donald Peattie, in his 1941 memoir The Road of a Naturalist, suggested that Schieffelin might have tried to transplant European robins, thrushes, and blackbirds as well, but they didn’t survive either. Then in 1890 and 1891 Eugene carried starlings to America –  40, 60, 80, or 100 of them, depending on whom you ask — and released them into Central Park. The American sky would never be the same.

It took a few years for starlings to thrive here, but then they really thrived. A search through the archives of The New York Times (with free viewing of articles published 1851-1922) reveals the dramatic change in public opinion as starlings spread across America.
On March 2, 1900, in a letter to the editors, a city resident named E. Brown asked:
“Can you inform me what sort of bird it is which frequents this neighborhood, answering closely the                                 description of a starling, viz., brown plumage, penciled, and darker on head than body; beak about one inch                 long, and rich yellow color; tail rather short, and legs rather long? … It may be found almost any clear morning             on a large tree in a yard at the southwest corner of Seventy-fifth Street and the Boulevard. Do you know of any             foreign birds having been liberated in this city besides sparrows, and by whom? Research has so far failed to                identify these birds.”

The editors responded:
“In reply to the above questions, William T. Davis, a Staten Island naturalist, who is familiar with the birds in             this vicinity, says: ‘There seems to me to be no doubt that Mr. Brown has been observing the starling…  A flock             of about forty starlings was liberated by Mr. Eugene Schieffelin [sic] in Central Park in March, 1890. A pair of             these birds built their nest in the roof of the Natural History Museum, at Seventy-seventh Street, in May, 1892,             and another pair were seen with their young on the lawn of a residence on Riverside Drive during the same                 year. At that time their fate as resident birds was far from certain, but now there are colonies in many places                 near the city. Many starlings may be seen at times in the tall trees at Livingston, S.I.  They have also been                     observed in Prospect Park, Flatbush, Spuyten Duyvil, New Rochelle, Oyster Bay, and Pelham Bay Park.’”

Davis proceeded to bestow praise that was probably shared by most people, at least for a while:
“’They are common in England and over most of Europe, and, as they devour insects, they are of use to the                     farmer. It is said that they will eat potato bugs. Their nests are usually built in the eaves of buildings and in old             hollow trees, and their whistling is pleasant and cheerful. As the starling has not been found to interfere with                 other birds, we may be glad that he has come to stay. The European goldfinch was introduced into this country             at Hoboken, N.J., in 1878, and has since spread over the upper parts of Manhattan Island and the vicinity.  It                 resembles the American goldfinch or thistlefinch.’”

A decade and a half later starlings were no longer considered “of use to the farmer.” They had become an infestation:
October 15, 1914:  “Glen Ridge, N.J., Oct. 14. — The State Game and Fish Commission has given permission to             the authorities of this borough to destroy the European starlings which have great amazed residents of several             streets where the birds congregated in enormous numbers.  Attempts of the residents to drive away the birds                 have been fruitless and they petitioned the local authorities to destroy them.”

December 20, 1931:  “Baltimore has recently waged a defensive war against an army of starlings. Thousands of             birds swooped down upon the city without warning…”

Jan 6, 1933:  “An army of starlings estimated at 50,000 is making a night sanctuary of the Exterior of the                     Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was disclosed yesterday. The police regard this as a conservative estimate, and             believe that [the number should be] 100,000 birds at least…”

July 9, 1933:  “Like the English sparrow, the European starling is rolling up enemies by the score. Michigan                 farmers recently reported that thousands of starlings had settled in every county of the State. The huge flocks             not only ravage the orchards, eating tons of fruit, but they commit a more serious offense, driving other birds             out of their homes and sanctuaries.”

By 1950 starlings had colonized North America from coast to coast and from Mexico to Hudson Bay. Today their numbers are estimated at more than 200 million.

August 19, 1951:  “The starlings and purple martins that have made nights hideous in a fashionable section                     here are getting a bitter taste of their own medicine — noise. Eddie Boyes, a Detroit radio engineer, is matching             the starlings whistle for whistle and shriek for shriek and they don’t like it.”

January 20, 1957:  “Tenacious as office holders, persistent as lobbyists, insensitive as social climbers — all                     familiar types here — the starlings of Washington will not quit it.”

March 16, 1959:  “Each day at sundown, motorists commuting over the Henry Hudson Parkway witness a                     ‘black blizzard’ of birds at 125th Street.”

But our feelings are complex. When the city of New York tried to reduce the pigeon population with poison, they inadvertently killed many starlings, awakening a surge of compassion:

Dec 5, 1975:  “A cluster of bird-lovers, some of them sobbing, gathered outside the Ethical Culture School at 33             Central Park West last night to mourn dozens of starlings, their feet mired in a chemical, that fell to their                     deaths from the school’s roof…”

The Other Birds

It’s not clear how many birds Schieffelin and the American Acclimatization Society tried to bring to America, but if they had Shakespeare’s complete aviary in mind they probably fell short. Scholars have assembled an inventory of about 600 birds mentioned by Shakespeare, including:
blackbird
bunting
chough
cock
cormorant
crow
cuckoo
daw
dive-dapper
dove
duck
eagle
falcon
finch
fowl
goose
guinea hen
hedge sparrow
heron
jay
kestrel
kingfisher
kite
lapwing
lark
loon
magpie
mallard
martin (martlet)
nightingale
osprey
ostrich
owl
paraquito
parrot
partridge
peacock
pelican
pheasant
phoenix
pigeon
popinjay
quail
raven
rook
sea gull
snipe
sparrow
starling
swallow
swan
thrush
turkey
vulture
woodcock
wren

A starling appears in Shakespeare just once, in Henry IV, Part I (Act I, Scene III). In that scene the angry Hotspur, wanting to torment Henry, conceives the idea of having a starling repeat the name of the king’s brother-in-law over and over. He says:
“But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I’ll hollow ‘Mortimer!’
Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him
To keep his anger still in motion.”

Shakespeare knew, of course, that starlings are excellent mimics and that they can sometimes be taught to speak a few words. Whether one can be taught to say “Mortimer” remains to be seen.

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Yesterday I recommended Richard Barnes’s photos of the starlings that flock above Rome in the evenings. Those images are best displayed in his book, Murmur. See www.richardbarnes.net