Fairy-Tale Files, published once weekly, feature three variations of a fairy tale chosen by one of Fairy Tale Review’s editors.
In the Turkish tale Madschun, a young man who is born without any hair is tasked with (among other things) collecting all the world’s birds as they flock to a single tree.
Flocks of starlings have become famous for a phenomenon called “murmuration,” in which hundreds or thousands of birds take to the air and move almost completely in synchronization, and also roost in large numbers—perhaps not all the world’s birds in a single tree, but definitely to the tune of thousands.
Novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote a lengthy piece for National Geographic about hunting practices on both sides of the Mediterranean that are decimating the global populations of migrating songbirds.
This edition of Fairy-Tale Files is brought to you by Fairy Tale Review Prose Editor Joel Hans.
