Starlings by Stark, Mike;

Hosszú leírás:

Has there ever been a more hated bird than the European starling? Let loose in New York City’s Central Park by a misguided aristocrat, the starlings were supposed to help curb insect outbreaks and add to the tuneful choir of other songbirds. Rather than staying put, the dark and speckled starlings marched across the continent like a conquering army. In less than sixty years, they were in every state in the contiguous United States and their numbers topped two hundred million. Cities came under siege; crops buckled beneath their weight. Public sentiment quickly soured.

A bitter, baffling, and sometimes comical war on starlings ensued. Weapons included dynamite, guns, bounties, fake owls, real owls, rubber snakes, balloons, itching powder, and greased building ledges. Still, artists and scientists marveled at their undulating aerial formations, which seemed equal parts poetry and mathematics. Keen listeners recognized the starling as one of the world’s great vocal mimics, imitating everything from fellow birds and cell phones to barking dogs, car alarms, and TV commercials. And then there were their undeniable skills of adaptation and survival. What if there was more to these stubborn villains than once thought?

Mike Stark’s Starlings is a first-of-its-kind history of starlings in America, an oddball, love-hate story at the intersection of human folly, ornithology, and one bird’s tenacious will to endure.

Tartalomjegyzék:

List of Illustrations

1. The Bird Man Cometh

2. Mr. Schieffelin’s Birds

3. A Frenzy of Introductions

4. The Sparrows

5. Across the Sea in Cages

6. Lessons from Down Under

7. Occupation

8. European Origins

9. The Skies Transformed

10. Appetites

11. Sing a Song of Starlings

12. Under Siege

13. In Defense of Starlings

14. How to Kill a Starling

15. Blast ’Em with Starling Calls

16. Darkness in the Golden State

17. Rise of the Bird Men

18. Death from Above

19. Can’t Beat ’Em? Eat ’Em

20. Mapping the Travelers

21. Poison Years

22. A Forever War

23. Spellbound

24. Built for Survival

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes