This summer I (and a group of my friends) had the opportunity to visit with our high school biology teacher, Mr. Tregaskis. It was great to see him! I got a chance to remind him that he was the one who showed me this book: King Solomon’s Ring. It was written by the animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz, here seen with a group of imprinted goslings who followed him everywhere.
Because of the effect the book had on me, Mr. Tregaskis is directly responsible for my interest in birds and bird behavior. I guess I imprinted on this book!
Here is Wikipedia’s summary of King Solomon’s Ring.
The book’s title refers to the legendary Seal of Solomon, a ring that supposedly gave King Solomon the power to speak to animals. Lorenz claims that he likewise achieved this feat of communication with several species. He accomplished this by raising them in and around his home and observing their behavior. King Solomon’s Ring describes the methods of his investigation, and his resulting findings aboutanimal psychology.
Lorenz’s findings include the surprisingly refined social system of the common Eurasian jackdaw, the uncanny behavior and bodily features of the tiny water shrew, and the surprisingly complex interactions of seemingly unintelligent aquarium fish. He interlards his narrative with anecdotes based on his unusual methods, without which he could not have made many of his observations.
King Solomon’s Ring dispels several common misconceptions about animals’ intelligence, but at the same time points out many of their similarities with humans, although some of these similarities come from speculative extrapolations (in fact, Lorenz has been criticized for excessive anthropomorphism). King Solomon’s Ring also addresses the issue of keeping pets. Lorenz praises the benefits that a pet owner derives from his pet, however, he also describes the hazards that an animal can pose to the inhabitants and material contents of a house, and the ways in which a pet’s captivity can make it miserable, and explains how to avoid each of these causes for discontent.
A few of the findings it presents have found their way into common knowledge since its publication, such as the phenomenon of imprinting.
One of the parts of this book that made an especially big impression on me was the process of hand-raising a starling chick and keeping it as a pet. Starlings have been kept as pets since ancient times because they can learn to mimic human speech.
Mimicry of human speech by starlings was reported in the works of Aristotle, Pliny and the ancient Romans. Shakespeare also knew of this ability, for in Henry IV (Part I), Hotspur threatens to train a starling to say the forbidden name “Mortimer” just to annoy the king. https://dangleason.wordpress.com/songbirds/starlings/
So, when my son and I were given a half-naked starling chick that the neighbor had found in a parking lot, we felt like we were following in the steps of Konrad Lorenz. (Note, here in Maryland it is legal to keep starlings as pets even though they are wild birds. The reasoning is, they aren’t NATIVE birds but are invasives from Europe.)
The next year the same neighbor found another half-naked, half-dead chick in the same parking lot. We suspect that the younger starling (we named her Spot) was from the same parents as the older one (named Izzie).
Izzie and Spot became an important part of our lives!
I found out years later that there was an interesting story about Lorenz and a pet starling. The bird kept him company when he was a prisoner of war during World War II. Quoting from Wiki–
He was sent to the Russian front in 1944 where he quickly became a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1948. In captivity he continued to work as a medic and “got quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors.” When he was repatriated, he was allowed to keep the manuscript of a book he had been writing, and his pet starling. He arrived back in Altenberg (his family home, near Vienna) “with manuscript and bird intact.” The manuscript became his book Behind the Mirror.
