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Show The story of starlings a biological success By JILLYN SMITH Science Writer Utah State University William Shakespeare is having his 423rd birthday this week. And I have a great idea for a mini-series. The story spans two continents. It has rugged individualism, colonization coloni-zation of a new land, ingenuity, state and federal agencies. It's an ark story. It's a Mayflower story. It's titled "Shakespeare and the Starling." ' It all starts because a playwright knows a hawk from a handsaw. Shakespeare mentioned 57 different diffe-rent birds in his works. Innocently. The camera pans. European starlings are nesting in the thatched roof of Shakespeare's house. They chatter in the trees of the English countryside. Immigration never enters their minds. Centuries pass. One day, in New York City, Eugene Schieffelin lays down a well-worn copy of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" and gazes into the trees of Central Park. He longs to hear a nightingale, nighting-ale, a skylark. Schieffelin has a little money to put into a hobby. He could go to Stratford-upon-Avon, but instead in-stead oh fateful day! he decides to bring all of Shakespeare's birds to New York. Next scene: A noisy ship arrives in New York harbor. Cages are unloaded. un-loaded. They contain nightingales, skylarks, chaffinches, English sparrows, European starlings. The fragile nightingales and skylarks sky-larks eventually expire in the unfamiliar un-familiar setting. The starlings, however, have been around people for a long time. To them, a house is a house. They make the best of things. A pair builds a nest under the eaves of the American Museum of Natural History. The birds ripple from Central ; Park. Soon they are seen by Bosto-nians Bosto-nians and Philadelphians. Their re- production puts rabbits to shame. People fire shotguns into roosting roost-ing trees. Starlings cross the Mississippi before 1930. i People douse the birds with fire hoses, spray them with soap, grease their roosting sites. They set off Roman candles, clang bells, slap boards together, fill balloons with dried peas and jiggle the balloons bal-loons to make frightening hissing noises. In 1943, starlings reach Pullman, Washington. In 1949, they are breeding in Salt Lake City. Everywhere, across the nation, scientific studies are commissioned. commis-sioned. How to control the starling? In 1932, a lone starling is spotted in Juneau, Alaska. No one can catch it. Ph.D. dissertations and master's theses are written about starlings, including at least two at Utah State University. Flocks of researchers are writing progress reports about starling control. Starlings probe in bark crevices like nuthatches, they hover at suet feeders like hummingbirds, they brace themselves on tree trunks like woodpeckers, they peek like elf owls from holes in saguaro cacti. They were pre-adapted, and they are adaptable. On the 423rd year of Shakespeare's Shakes-peare's birth, a hundred thousand starlings are at home in a new country, coun-try, from coast to coast, inspiring its literature. |
