good morning Hank it's Tuesday today I'd
like to share with you the story of
Eugene Schieffelin and his idea that
seemed good at the time so Schieffelin
was born in New York City in 1827 and in
many ways he lived the American dream
which is to say that he was born rich
and remained so he was the seventh son
of a famous family and he worked for his
father's pharmaceutical company he also
loved birds and possibly Shakespeare but
more on that later at any rate we know
that Schieffelin like to import European
bird species and introduce them into New
York City for instance he might have
been the first person to introduce the
House Sparrow to North America he wanted
to quote exterminate the caterpillars
which infested the trees of Madison Park
and who knows he might have been
successful I haven't seen a lot of
caterpillars in Madison Square Park
lately although I have seen a fair
number of house sparrows Schieffelin
also to use his word liberated many
other european bird species into new
york including bull finches and skylarks
and nightingales all of which died but
on March 6th 1890 he released a flock of
some 60 common starlings into Central
Park in New York City and in doing so
sparked a magnificent disaster now here
in North America we call the common
Starling the European Starling in much
the same way that the French called
syphilis the Italian disease and the
Italians called it the French disease
their American population has grown from
Schieffelin 60 Birds to somewhere in the
neighborhood of 200 million in fact
there are now more European starlings in
the Americas than there are in Europe
they form these epic flocks called
murmuration x' that are truly beautiful
but also hugely destructive like if
you've ever had a murmuration of
starlings in your backyard and i have
you'll know that they produce an
astonishing amount of poop also they
crowd out native species and cause about
a billion dollars a year in damages to
the United States mostly in the form of
crop destruction plus they make a lot of
noise Wikipedia describes the starlings
call as unmusical but varied which
incidentally is how I'm gonna describe
my singing voice from now on there's a
hilarious bit from a 1906 birding book
that says of the Starling from the bird
lovers point of view the Starling is a
decided acquisition to the bird life of
our cities where it's long drawn cheery
whistle is in welcome contrast to the
noisy chatter of house sparrows except
one only hardcore fans of experimental
music would call the starlings whistle
cheery and
the reason we have to listen to the
chattering of house sparrows is because
we introduced them to America right but
back to Schieffelin his Liberation's
were part of this whole 19th century
movement called acclimatization wherein
people would bring foreign flora and
fauna to different places to see if they
could make human life better alright so
this is the part of the video where I
tell you the lesson which is that humans
should not play God or mess with nature
or whatever but no I mean the weird
thing about the acclimatize they're
responding appropriately to developments
in human history
I mean if plants and animals hadn't been
moved between the Americas and
afro-eurasia in the centuries after the
Columbian Exchange began in 1492 there
would be no potatoes in Ireland no cows
or horses in the Americas and most
worrisome ly no pizza because tomatoes
are a food from the Americas and wheat
is a food from afro-eurasia
one of the reasons that fewer people
will starve this decade than in any
decade in the last several thousand
years is that we've gotten really good
at moving plant and animal species
around to places where they will thrive
it's easy to judge Schieffelin and in
some ways fair because there were
American ornithologist at the time who
understood the dangers of
acclimatization but Schieffelin didn't
know the future and neither do we I'm
sure we also have bad ideas that seem
good now but I don't know which ideas
but I do think it's helpful to remember
when thinking about what we believe or
what we believe we know that history is
littered with stories of starlings Hank
I'll see you on Friday
PS about Shakespeare there's this old
story that Schieffelin introduced the
starlings as part of a project to bring
every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's
plays to the United States there doesn't
seem to be any contemporary evidence for
that story unfortunately but if you can
find some you could solve a minor but
pervasive historical mystery