THE BEAUTIFUL EUROPEAN STARLING

Have you ever spotted a black bird, with yellow to orange beak, white spots on the front side, orange lines on the feathers of the wings, reflecting green and purple when the rays of the sun touches the feathers. Well, this beautiful bird is named European Starling or Common Starling or Sturnus Vulgaris.

But, eventually you will wonder how an European bird ended up making a population up to 200 millions in North America?! It’s all Shakespeare’s fault. The well known author mentioned them in his writings, so it resulted with his enthusiasts bringing them into North America in the nineteenth century.

The entire population of European Starlings inhabiting the North American continent, from the cold lands of Alaska to the hot south of Mexico, descended from proximally 100 birds that were released in the early 1890s in the iconic Central Park (New York City).

So they became US citizens without asking, and now they live all over this great country, multiplying more and more.