Eugene Schieffelin (January 29, 1827 — August 15, 1906):
In 1890, he released 60 starlings into New York City’s Central Park. He did the same with another 40 birds in 1891. Schieffelin wanted to introduce all the birds mentioned in the plays of William Shakespeare to North America. He may have also been trying to control the same pests that had been annoying him thirty years earlier, when he sponsored the introduction of the house sparrow to North America.
European starlings were not native to North America. Schieffelin imported the starlings from England. Scientists estimate that descendants from those two original released flocks now number at more than 200 million residing in the United States.
The starlings' wildly successful spread has come at the expense of many native birds that compete with the starling for nest holes in trees. The starlings have also had negative impact on the US economy and ecosystem
His attempts to introduce bullfinches, chaffinches, nightingales, and skylarks were not successful.
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Often, when watching starlings feeding in my backyard, or starlings coming onto the porch to get cat food for the strays, I think of him. How greatly seemingly "small acts" can change the future landscape! It's a shame the nightingales and skylarks didn't prosper. Now kids reading Keats and Shelley have to go to Google to see what they're talking about in the poems and hear the songs on YouTube. I did the same thing to hear the great songs of the Japanese bush warbler, the uguisu, whose notes haunt so many haiku of centuries past.
It's rather hard to find an actual photograph of E.S. I think I found one of his father, but Eugene proved more elusive. Here is his tomb in Newport, Rhode Island. He had more siblings than cats generally do. One sister became a Remington, but I'm not sure if it was one of the more notable Remington families (weaponry, art). I imagine he was a bit of an eccentric.
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