Starlings

There has been an amazing murmuration of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) up in San Rafael the past couple of weeks, at the Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery on Los Ranchitos Road, between 4:30 and 5:30 every afternoon. Many hundreds of thousands, perhaps up to a million. They roost overnight in the graveyard's eucalyptus trees. A FB friend, Jerry Downs, posted this magical photograph of them the other day, remarking, "I never thought I would take a picture with thousands of birds that I would consider minimal until I shot this one on an overcast evening two days ago." (Click on the photo to see it large.)

I wondered out loud to David on our afternoon walk today, where did they come from? Shakespeare, he said; somebody back when wanted to bring all the birds of Shakespeare to America, and here they are.

It's true: in 1890, Eugene Schieffelin of New York City released 60 starlings in Central Park as part of an effort to populate the country with Shakespeare's birds. A year later, he released 40 more. Since then, they have multiplied to some 200 million, and spread throughout the continent. They did well. So did house sparrows, which the same Mr. Shieffelin introduced thirty years earlier. His attempts to introduce bullfinches, chaffinches, nightingales, and skylarks were less successful. Fortunately, perhaps. Because introduced species tend not to be ecologically beneficial.

Starlings, for example, nest in holes, outcompeting other hole-nesters such as red-headed woodpeckers, purple martins, and bluebirds. They also wreak havoc on agriculture, damaging fruit trees and stealing nutritious grain from dairy cattle's feed, to the tune of $1 billion in losses to farmers annually.

They are a pretty bird, to be sure, and marvelous singers, with up to 35 separate songs and 14 clicking sounds. Mozart had a pet starling.

I can't fault them for being successful. I just wish they'd stayed in Europe, and didn't outcompete our native birds. But what's done is done. There's no putting that genie back in the bottle.

Ironically, starlings are mentioned just once in Shakespeare, in Henry IV, Part I: Hotspur is planning to drive King Henry crazy by letting a starling endlessly repeat the name of Hotspur’s brother-in-law, Lord Mortimer—whose traitorous name Henry has forbidden him ever to speak again. Says Hotspur: “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.” That's it! That's why we now have hundreds of millions of starlings—because Hotspur wanted to drive King Henry crazy. And because of Eugene Schieffelin. 

I am seriously considering a trip up to San Rafael this weekend. To see hundreds of thousands of birds in choreographed flight? It must be magical. 

3/6 I did not go to San Rafael.... But I am here now to post a link to some more amazing photos of starlings, over Lough Ennell, in Ireland: here.