Starlings
University of Nebraska Press (Verlag)
978-1-4962-4202-0 (ISBN)
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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.
Mike Stark is a longtime journalist and author. His previous nonfiction books include the award-winning Chasing the Ghost Bear: On the Trail of America’s Lost Super Beast (Bison Books, 2022) and Wrecked in Yellowstone: Greed, Obsession and the Untold Story of Yellowstone’s Most Infamous Shipwreck. His first novel, The Derelict Light (Bison Books), was published in 2023. He is the creative director for the Center for Biological Diversity and lives in Tucson, Arizona.
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
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 1.3.2025 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 13 photographs, 5 illustrations |
| Verlagsort | Lincoln |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Themenwelt | Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Naturführer |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte | |
| Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-4962-4202-5 / 1496242025 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-4962-4202-0 / 9781496242020 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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