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Meet the American Acclimatization Society, who introduced (among others) the Starling to North America.
It’s sometimes said this was to get all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare into North America, but this appears to be speculation. What we do know is that they were people trying to get European wildlife everywhere in the world. A fantastically bad colonial project any way you look at it.
Gosh, that’s so misguided and tragic. The North American continent has so many beautiful landscapes and cool wildlife that doesn’t exist in most of Europe — and this was even more the case back in 1871. It obviously makes sense that they thought this way, given that the USA is borne of a colonial mindset, but damn, it’s sad that this made them so ignorant to what is cool and unique about their home
This is funny and all, but this community is no longer science memes, just funny things in general.
Starlings are pretty birds, but they become fully gorgeous when the sunlight hits them right and you see their rich rainbow iridescence
https://www.birdguides-cdn.com/cdn/gallery/birds/Starling3-2.jpg
Did a quick read on wiki and turns out, all the starlings (millions) in North America are descendants of 80 starlings released on 1890 in NYC central park. Crazy
I wonder what things would have looked like if they never had done that!
They also have amazing vocal capabilities, being able to mimic other birds songs and human speech. Studies have found they have some of the highest intelligence and problem solving skills found in birds. And murmurations! Their ability to cooperate in large groups in order to scare off predators is unprecedented. Starlings are endlessly fascinating birds.
A European starling called “The Mouth” was able to mimic sounds well enough to reproduce a drawing in the spectrograph:
They’re also one of the very few birds that federal law allows you to disturb, being such an invasive species.
I think I remember seeing that going after pigeons is allowed also. Though, you may be restricted in how based on the city and/or zoning area.
