Loved, loathed but never ignored, the Starling has never gone gently into that good night and perhaps Dylan Thomas had them in mind when he continued:
“But rage, rage against the dying of the light”
For who has ever stood in a freezing February twilight and not felt the febrile energy from a massive murmuration.
Literary Prominence of the Starling
- Sacred to the Celts and revered by the Romans, who read their flocking forms like air borne tea leaves to see how the Gods were feeling, the Starling first gained literary super stardom in the Welsh Mabinogian. Our heroine Branwen has been shipped off to Ireland where she is enduring an oppressive marriage. She tames a Starling and teaches it to speak before despatching it back to Wales to her brother Bran who comes and rescues her.
- The Starling goes on to star in Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats and, not the least, (well maybe the least) Pokemon!
How did the Starling inspire Mozart?
- Literature is not the Starling’s only artistic outing. Mozart famously had a pet starling of which he was very fond. It could sing parts of his compositions and may even have contributed a variation to some of the original phrasing. When it died, he staged an elaborate funeral for the bird and composed an elegy in its honour.
Controversy surrounding the Starling
- The Starling stirs mixed feelings in many.
- Hated and persecuted in America as an aggressive and unwelcome invader it thrives against the odds.
- Admired and revered in Britain, its numbers are in marked decline.
Perhaps we could come to some arrangement and swap some grey squirrels. One man’s pet is another man’s pest!
