European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

This year-round Central Park resident is known as both the "European Starling" and the "Common Starling." All too many things around New York have become both 'european' and 'common': H&M, Le Pain Quotidien, Pret a Manger. I suppose the Old World has begun its long-awaited counterstrike to the Americanization of world cuisine and ornithology! In truth, a man named Eugene Schieffelin introduced this European bird to America in the 19th century not as a pièce de résistance against McDonald's but because he merely wanted to give America all the birds mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.