Shakespeare gets the bird in US

WILLIAM Shakespeare was born four and a half centuries ago this year; he was baptised on April 26, 1564.

The glove-maker’s son from Stratford acquired a love of birds in the woods and lanes of Warwickshire — he was an early ‘twitcher’.

Archibald Geikie, a Scottish geologist and writer, combed the Bard’s writings for references to birds and, in 1916, published a Shakespearean ‘tick list’ of 45 species. Caroline Spurgeon, and other literary critics, carried out similar analyses. About 64 species are mentioned in 606 references to birds in the plays and poems.

Tolstoy had little regard for Shakespeare but the great dramatist has few critics nowadays. Journalist Steve Mirsky, however, has a complaint. Writing in the Scientific American, he suggests the Bard’s love of birds led some of his admirers to bring a notorious pest to America.

The American Acclimatisation Society was founded in New York in 1871. Its members sought to introduce to the United States ‘such varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdoms as may be useful or interesting’. Pharmacist Eugene Schieffelin, chairman of the society in 1877, wanted to introduce every bird species mentioned in the poet’s works.

Chaffinches and blackbirds had been released into New York’s Central Park in 1864, seven years before the Acclimatisation Society was founded. America did not appeal to the new arrivals, however, and neither species survived. Another early introduction was spectacularly successful. Sixteen house sparrows were imported to Brooklyn in 1851 and a hundred more the following year. Their descendants would go on to become New York City’s commonest birds. ‘A winged settler has taken his place, with Teutons and men of the Celtic race’, wrote poet William Cullen Bryan. There were further introductions elsewhere; settlers believed that sparrows could help control insect pests. Today, house sparrows are found in suitable habitat from Mexico to Newfoundland. Their cousin, the Eurasian tree sparrow, fared less well. Several pairs were released in St. Louis, Missouri in 1870. Some of their descendants survive but the species has not spread from the area.

By 1880, the Acclimatisation Society had released pheasants and skylarks. Pheasants became established in the northern states and Canada but the skylarks didn’t prosper. Those found on Vancouver Island stem from a later introduction. European goldfinches eke out a living in some localities but the species is not well established anywhere in America.

Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, is well known to Irish secondary school students. Henry, who seized Richard II’s crown in a coup d’état, was opposed by Henry Percy, known as ‘Hotspur’. ‘I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but “Mortimer“, and give it him, to keep his anger still in motion’, declares Hotspur, referring to Edmund de Mortimer, rightful heir to the throne. The Acclimatisation Society responded to Hotspur’s suggestion by releasing a hundred starlings in Central Park, New York, in 1890 and ‘91. This would have disastrous consequences.

Given its history in Ireland and Scotland, the starling was an unlikely American coloniser. During the 19th century, it was relatively uncommon as a breeding bird here. Richard Ussher and Robert Warren, writing in 1900, noted that ‘throughout the mainland of Kerry and Western Cork it (the starling) seems to be still unknown in summer, while in Waterford and Wexford only a few scattered pairs build’. Although it bred on islands, ‘the remaining parts of Donegal, Galway and Kerry are not thus resorted to’.

In America, surprisingly, the starling proved to be a spectacularly successful, spreading to every state but Alaska. Its ability to exploit the man-made environment has made it one of the most hated creatures in the US. Starlings are accused of damaging property, spreading invasive plant species and threatening air safety. There may be up to two billion of them in America and they may cost the US and Canada up to $125 billion each year.

* Shakespeare to Blame for Introduction of European Starlings to America. Steve Mirsky. Scientific American. April 2014.