The changing geographies of human–starling relations in the shared spaces of the Anthropocene

Morris, Andy (2023). The changing geographies of human–starling relations in the shared spaces of the Anthropocene. In: Petri, Olga and Guida, Michael eds. Winged Worlds: Common Spaces of Avian-Human Lives. Oxon, UK and New York, USA: Routledge, pp. 119–135.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003334767-10

Abstract

This chapter takes, as its starting point, the growing numbers of roosting starlings in the developing urban centre of early 20th-century London, the construction of starlings as an ‘invading’ pest species, and the subsequent failed initiatives to exclude them, highlighted by press outrage, parliamentary debate, and political satire. This account is then set against another beginning in the early 2000s where the geographies and sensibilities of human–starling relations have been reframed through the affective spectacle of the starling murmuration – the co-ordinated aerial display of separate flocks amassing as they prepare to roost for the night, eagerly experienced by reciprocal human gatherings. Finally, this chapter turns to present-day Rome where the geographies of pest and spectacle co-exist. Here, as starlings map out their own city spaces, they are simultaneously entangled within both the political tensions and the aesthetic attractions of human life in Rome. The consideration of starlings as co-existent pest and spectacle in Rome serves to connect all of these times and spaces and, in doing so, reveal the necessarily messy relations of humans and starlings in the context of the Anthropocene.

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