In 1890, Eugene Schieffelin released European starlings in Central Park; within 69 years, their descendants had reached the Pacific

Imagine a wealthy New Yorker standing in Central Park in 1890, opening a few small cages, and letting go of birds that had never before flown over American soil. It seemed like a harmless, even sentimental gesture at the time. According to the US Forest Service invasive species learning kit, that single afternoon helped change the sound of American mornings for good.

He released several dozen European starlings among the park's trees, accounts vary on the exact number, with estimates ranging from about 60 to 80, hoping to add a familiar bird to his adopted home. He returned the following spring with a second release of similar size, bringing the total closer to 100 birds. Within 69 years, the birds had crossed the entire continent and reached the Pacific coast.

The man behind the birds
His name was Eugene Schieffelin, a wealthy New York drug manufacturer who chaired the American Acclimatization Society, a group devoted to introducing European plants and animals to North America. For decades, the popular version of his story has cast him as a Shakespeare superfan who set out to bring every bird mentioned in the playwright's works to America, but that detail is on shakier ground than most retellings suggest.


According to the National Invasive Species Information Center resource, Schieffelin's starling release is widely cited as part of a broader plan to introduce Shakespeare's birds to the United States. However, researchers Lauren Fugate and John MacNeill Miller, in a 2021 study, found no contemporary evidence that Shakespeare was actually his motivation.

The connection first appeared in print in 1947, four decades after Schieffelin's death, in an essay by naturalist Edwin Way Teale that presented it as fact without citing a source. Schieffelin's own obituary mentions his love of painting and his career as a pharmacist, but never Shakespeare or literature at all.

According to the JSTOR Daily account, Schieffelin had already tried and failed to establish other European birds in Central Park over the preceding decades, including house sparrows years earlier, long before the starlings ever arrived. The release that finally took hold came in 1890 and 1891, and according to the US Forest Service account, he said it was for "the good of the community." His most lasting success, by a wide margin, turned out to be the European starling.

According to the National Invasive Species Information Center resource, Schieffelin's starling release is widely documented as part of a broader plan to introduce birds mentioned in Shakespeare's works to the United States.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology feature noted that Schieffelin released roughly 100 European starlings into Central Park around 1890, in what became the first successful introduction of the species to North America. Accounts differ slightly on the exact split between the initial release and a possible follow-up the next year, but the total is consistently cited as around 100 birds. Those first birds survived the winter and went on to nest successfully the next spring, something earlier attempts to bring starlings to America had failed to do. This makes his release one of the earliest documented starling introductions in North America.

A slow start, then an unstoppable spread
The spread was not instant. According to the same Cornell Lab feature, the population needed decades to build up before it could push outward, and by the 1940s, starlings were already found in almost every US state and Canadian province. According to the 1959 article in The Condor titled ‘The Starling Arrives in San Diego, California Get access Arrow,’ by 1959, just 69 years after that first release, the starlings had reached San Diego, California, on the Pacific coast, completing a coast-to-coast spread from a single New York City park.

Few animal introductions in American history have covered so much ground so quickly, starting from such a small number of birds. It took the starling less than seven decades to go from a single Manhattan park to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, a journey that spanned deserts, mountain ranges, farmland, and dozens of state lines.

Why the starling took over so completely
Starlings are not picky eaters, and they settle almost anywhere. According to the Cornell Lab feature, genetic testing of starling populations from across the country found them to be remarkably similar to one another, even though the birds now live in wildly different climates and landscapes, from humid Southern towns to dry Western plains. That flexibility helped a single founding population turn into one of the most widespread birds on the continent.

According to the National Invasive Species Information Center resource, starling populations have spread across nearly all of North America, making the bird widespread today.

The cost of a familiar bird
The starling's success has come at a price. The National Invasive Species Information Center resource, citing research by Linz and colleagues, states that starlings cause an estimated 800 million dollars in agricultural damage every year in the United States, largely by raiding grain crops, fruit orchards, and livestock feed.

According to the Cornell Lab feature, the starling population in North America once peaked at an estimated 200 million breeding adults, all descended from Schieffelin's original release. That means a single decision, made on a whim by one Shakespeare enthusiast, permanently reshaped the bird population of an entire continent.

A lesson that still applies today
The starling's story is often cited as a warning about moving species between continents, even with good intentions. Schieffelin almost certainly never imagined that his small gesture, meant to make a New York park feel a little more like home, would spread across the United States and cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars a year in damage.

It is a reminder that ecosystems are more delicate than they appear from the outside. A bird that thrives in England is not guaranteed to behave the same way in America, especially once it has open territory and no history with local wildlife to hold it back. More than a century later, the European starling remains one of the clearest examples in American history of how one well-meaning decision can ripple outward for generations, long after the person who made it is gone.