How did European starlings become one of America’s most numerous songbirds?
Everywhere you look around Kalamazoo there’s a starling somewhere these days. These invasive birds have become naturalized to the United States.
But where did they come from?
Wherever you live, you’ve undoubtedly seen them, heard them, read about them and, perhaps, even cursed them. European starlings are stocky black birds with feathers that are covered in white spots during winter that turn black and glossy in summer. They tend to show up almost everywhere, often in large and aggressive numbers, in shade trees over houses, on lawns, in agricultural fields where they devour grain crops and, even, in airplane engines. Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 – 1960, slammed into a large flock of starlings while taking off from Boston’s Logan Airport, killing 62 of the 72 passengers on board. They are very aggressive towards our native species often taking over bird boxes and other prime nesting areas.
But how, you might wonder, did they get across the Atlantic Ocean in the first place and, once in the New World, how did they become so numerous?
You can thank William Shakespeare and a self-described Shakespeare fanatic by the name of Eugene Schieffelin.
He imported 60 starlings to New York and on March 6, 1890, brought them from his country house to Central Park. Reportedly, other introductions of birds from Shakespeare’s poems and plays had not fared well in America. So what could possibly go wrong with releasing five dozen little black birds with stubby tails in the middle of New York City on what has been described as a snowy and cold spring morning? More than 125 years and 200 million starlings later, we know the answer.