Summary: Shakespeare's references to 65 species of birds includes well-known common names like the Turtledove, Cuckoo, and Nightingale. These birds were all plentiful in Shakespeare's era. But today they are the UK IUCN Red List of species threatened with extinction. There is therefore a gap between our common knowledge of these birds, whose cultural familiarity seems to imply abundance, and their real biological scarcity. This brief talk will explore how ecologically oriented Shakespeare in performance can contribute to closing this biocultural gap by recovering awareness of historical pathways from profusion to near-extinction, and fostering mindfulness of species rewilding and future well-being