As a Shakespeare enthusiast (but not an academic), people regularly send me this story and it drives me crazy. I'm talking about how starlings came to be in the United States, because a man named Eugene Schieffelin was on a quest to introduce all the birds of Shakespeare into the country.
That Mr. Schieffelin did this is not in question. What I have a problem with is the Shakespeare thing. I can find no proof that this was his reason. Every story that mentions the Shakespeare connection was written after his death. I've even located his obituary and it mentions the starlings, but not Shakespeare. In fact, the obituary merely says that he was trying to get rid of the caterpillars around his house.
Can anybody locate a document from the time he was alive (1827-1906) that would possibly suggest where people got the Shakespeare idea? The connection seems coincidental at best. Not only did Shakespeare mention starlings just once (Henry IV Part 1), it seems to also be true that this is the only bird Mr. Schieffelin introduced. If he was obsessed, as the story often goes, why did he just stop? The starling thing happened in 1890, plenty of years before his death.
regarding the claim that it was inspired by shakespeare, here's an excerpt from Edward Tenner's 1996 book Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, page 153 in the paperback printing:
Generations of writers have mocked Schieffelin as a sentimental fool, in part because he allegedly wished to introduce all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to Central Park. But neither the biography, the bylaws of the Acclimatization Society, nor other contemporary sources mention any such Shakespearean project. The story is probably a later speculation.
Well, what do you know! I'll keep looking around.
Okay, I got my hands on "Bird Invasion" in Teale (1948).
Page 17:
Every one of America's untold millions of these birds, according to Dr. Frank M. Chapman, has descended from one hundred immigrants—the sixty that arrived in 1890 to be set free in Central Park and forty more that reached New York the following year. Their coming was the result of one man's fancy. That man was Eugene Schieffelin, a wealthy New York drug manufacturer. His curious hobby was the introduction into America of all the birds mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.
(Blakeslee's conjecture stands. Next: someone should go to Storrs, CT to visit UConn's Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and check out Box 6 (or some other box) of the Teale papers and FIND WHERE THAT SHAKESPEARE DETAIL CAME FROM!)
From p27–28:
In all the world, there are about seventy species of starlings. In the United States, there is only one—the one that Eugene Schieffelin's fancy turned loose in the past years of the century. That one, to many people's way of thinking, has been enough. But in the course of time, Nature's balance will be restored. The starling will find its level. And, in the end, this noisy bird invader that has conquered a continent may be regarded as an immigrant that has developed into a beneficial and valued citizen of the country. [end]
I find it interesting that Teale uses the word "citizen", considering two earlier articles:
“The European starling as an American Citizen” (Chapman, 1925) "How About Citizenship Papers for the Starling?" (Carson, 1939)
it seems to also be true that this is the only bird Mr. Schieffelin introduced. If he was obsessed, as the story often goes, why did he just stop?
To address this one point right now, there were lots of introduced species, but the starlings seem to have been the most fecund, flourishing in North America, but other species of birds that were introduced by "acclimatization societies" were not as spectacularly successful.
NYTimes Nov 15, 1877 Source: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A03E3D6103FE63BBC4D52DFB767838C669FDE
Can anyone lay eyes on the Chapman (1906, 1925) or Teale (1947/48) sources?
EDIT: Chapman articles linked in an above post; i saw nothing in those sources about shakespeare.
Apologies if I'm hogging this post; I also wanted to point out Reddit posts on the Starlings story from years gone by.
EDIT: hey, apparently /u/dmorin has been on top of this for quite a while now! LINK
EDIT: I have requested Days Without Time: Adventures of a Naturalist from my university library; it's in storage and i should have it soon!