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.