A (flock of) STARling to keep his anger still (06 Sep 2008)

[neufer]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080906.html
------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin

<<Eugene Schieffelin (b. New York 1827; d. Rhode Island 1906) belonged
to the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and the New York
Zoological Society. In 1890, He released 60 starlings into New York
City’s Central Park. He did the same with another 40 birds in 1891.
It is said (though there is no evidence to support this) that his
motivation was to allow New Yorkers to see all the birds mentioned in
the plays of William Shakespeare; more likely he was merely 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.

Until that time (1890), 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 is believed to have come at the expense of
many native birds that compete with the starling for nest holes in
trees. His attempts to introduce bullfinches, chaffinches,
nightingales, and skylarks were not successful.

Schieffelin belonged to the Acclimation Society of North America, a
group with the seemingly laudable, if misguided, aim of aiding the
exchange of plants and animals from one part of the world to another.
In the 19th Century, such acclimatization societies were fashionable
and supported by the scientific knowledge and beliefs of that era,
as the effect that non-native species could have
on the local ecosystem was not yet known.>>
------------------------------------
The Birds of Shakespeare
http://birdsofbard.blogspot.com/
------------------------------------
Bioinvasion: From Old World to New
By Chad Cohen (January 23, 2001)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... _2001-01-2...

<<Shakespeare compared sparrows to angels that could awaken dreamers
from feathery beds. He mused on larks singing at the gates of heaven
and the love songs of robins.

Birds of all feathers flutter throughout the works of the bard. From
the majesty of their flight to the sweet sounds of their songs, the
imagery they evoked captured the imagination of generations. So much
so that, in 1890, an eccentric New Yorker and Shakespeare fanatic
named Eugene Schieffelin felt compelled to introduce all the birds of
Shakespeare to the United States.

“In the 1800s, there was a lot of this, a lot of societies bringing
things over,” says Joe DiCostanzo, a bird specialist for the American
Museum of Natural History. DiCostanzo says Schieffelin was not the
only person to share the flora and fauna of the Old World with the
new. Immigrants tried to introduce all kinds of birds, plants, and
animals in the late 19th century to remind them of home. “Most of [the
bio-introductions] don’t work; most of them die out; they just don’t
fit in,” says DiCostanzo. “But some of them did. Unfortunately some of
them did too well, things like starlings, I see starlings flying by us
right now.”

The starling’s ability to mimic human speech earned the bird this
cameo in Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “The king forbade my tongue to speak
of Mortimer. But I will find him when he is asleep, and in his ear
I’ll holler ‘Mortimer!’ Nay I’ll have a starling shall be taught to
speak nothing but Mortimer, and give it to him to keep his anger still
in motion.”

It is the only mention of the starling in all of Shakespeare. Yet it
was enough to inspire Schieffelin to import 60 of the fruitful birds
to the United States and release them one March day in New York’s
Central Park.

“The very first nests were here, under the eves of [New York City’s]
Museum of Natural History,” says DiCostanzo, “And from those first few
starlings, [which] might be considered the Adam and Eve of North
American starlings, we now have 200 million.” These 200 million—
together with their other feathered friends like house sparrows, and
pigeons—make up the majority of the birds most Americans see everyday.
None of these are native to the United States. The invaders compete
for food with native birds like purple martens and eastern bluebirds,
which have been pushed to the brink of extinction. Since the locals
tend to fly south for the winter, the foreign birds that are here
perenially have an advantage when it comes to nesting spots. “There’s
no place for the native birds to come back after their migration,”
explains DiCostanzo. “They just get forced out and if they can’t nest,
eventually the population is going to go down. And that’s been one of
the big problems.”

Beautiful Invaders

But invasive species aren’t always an ugly duckling and emotions can
run high against efforts to remove them. Mute swans were brought to
Chesapeake Bay from Europe to grace the ponds of large estates with
their “courtly beauty.” During a major storm in March of 1962, high
tides and strong winds enabled five swans from this estate to escape.
“It’s just a matter of numbers and exponential growth over time,” says
Larry Hindman of the U.S. Department of Natural Resources. “The
breeding population gradually increased. They have a high reproductive
output. They have no natural predators—by the 1990s the population
just began to spike and now we’ve got about 4,000 birds.”

Four thousand mute swans means Maryland has the biggest mute swan
population in the country. Unlike most other bay birds, they’re here
year round. Waterfowl specialist Larry Hindman is heading a project to
determine their impact and what actions the state should take. “We are
already seeing conflicts with native wildlife,” he says. “There are
ecological impacts of the swan on the limited baygrass supply and on
their competition with native waterfowl.”

When it comes to beautiful birds like mute swans, state officials who
might want to control them have to contend with much more than the
birds themselves. Over the years mute swans have worked their way into
the hearts of many of the residents who are against any efforts to get
rid of them. “They’re so nice. They’re so gentle. They don’t make any
noise. They’re quiet,” says Maxine Ritter, local resident and swan
lover. “They just float around and they don’t cause any harm.”

Mute swans are treading the fine line that distinguishes what may be
just an innocuous exotic species from an invasive one. For now there’s
no way to predict which way they’ll go. “I just love them. God’s
creatures, how can you fuss with God’s creatures?” says Ritter. But
people have been fussing with God’s creatures for thousands of years
by whim, by accident and sometimes with the most noble of intentions.

“I don’t know how [Schieffelin] would feel knowing that the bird he
introduced with just 60 birds in central park has become 200 million,”
concludes DiCostanza. “He might feel he’s accomplished his goal of
bringing this bird of Shakespeare over here. The starling is probably
more familiar to people now than Shakespeare...in a lot of the
country.”>>

[henk21cm]

How would the evening sky look like in a cluster? Todays APOD gives us an impressioin. But how realistic is it? If stars are visible during daylight, as in the APOD, they must be at least of magnitude -5. The distance between the stars must be considerable smaller than in the neighbourhood of our sun. So, what are the average distances in a cluster? The APOD of 20080826 reports "several million stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across".

Is that sufficient to flock the sky with a few hundred bright stars?

[neufer]

How would the evening sky look like in a cluster? Todays APOD gives us an impressioin. But how realistic is it? If stars are visible during daylight, as in the APOD, they must be at least of magnitude -5. The distance between the stars must be considerable smaller than in the neighbourhood of our sun. So, what are the average distances in a cluster? The APOD of 20080826 reports "several million stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across".

Is that sufficient to flock the sky with a few hundred bright stars?

Absolutely!

The problem with the photo analogy is that the STARlings are all equally bright; whereas, there would be a distribution of brightnesses in the STAR field.