The Shakespearean Tall Tale That Shaped How We See Starlings

Starlings

The New York Times has a piece on starlings in North America and whether Shakespeare had anything to do with it.

So he and Ms. Fugate started digging through archives and databases for any link between the Bard-lover and the bird. According to their findings, which were published in the journal Environmental Humanities in November, Schieffelin did release 40 pairs of European starlings into New York City twice in the springs of 1890 and 1891. But Ms. Fugate and Dr. Miller failed to find evidence that Schieffelin was the Shakespeare superfan he has been made out to be.

They found in an essay collection published in 1948 that Edwin Way Teale, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nature writer, was the first to link the two. He referred to Schieffelin’s “curious hobby” of introducing “all the birds mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.”

Apparently, not. I have seen the myth mentioned many times and like a lot of things it may be all bunk.

The piece discusses some other starling lore that is interesting too. They affect cattle feed lots way more than I dreamed they did. I thought they were tied to polenta which Steve has mentioned several times but I don’t see much on the blog. It may have been in one of his books.

The Times has a paywall. If you are blocked by it, like I am, you can hack around it, like I did. I only went as far as to get the text but that is usually as much as I need.

Leave a Comment