Every single European starling flying over the US today, all 200 million of them, can trace its family tree back to one chilly morning in Manhattan in 1890. It's one of the wildest chain reactions in American history, and almost nobody planned it to happen.
On March 6, 1890, a wealthy New York drug manufacturer named Eugene Schieffelin walked into Central Park with wooden crates full of birds that had never before touched American soil. He opened the doors and let 60 European starlings fly free into the New York sky. A year later, in 1891, he did it again, releasing about 40 more.
