File under 'no good deed goes unpunished': the starling in America

"Had the Bard not mentioned the starling in the third scene of 'Henry IV,' arguably the most hated bird in North America might never have arrived. In the early 1890s, about 100 European starlings were released in New York City's Central Park by a group dedicated to bringing to America every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare."

See what happens when there's no Internet to occupy people?

Full Washington Post story from which comes the above-quoted paragraph here.

From UpNorthGuides.com:

"Starlings, in effect, talked their way into North America. Members of the same family as the more renowned talking myna bird from India, starlings too have impressive vocal abilities and commonly mimic the calls of other birds as well as cats, dogs, flutes, chimes and machine sounds. They were originally grassland birds and became commonplace around the farms and cites of the ancient world, where they were taught by the Romans to speak Latin words and phrases, with proper gender and tenses. In Shakespeare’s "Henry IV," after the king forbids the name of his rival, Edmund Mortimer, to be uttered, the defamed earl’s ally, Henry Percy, malevolently jests:

I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him
To keep his anger still in motion.

This brief mention on stage bought the starling a ticket to America. In 1890, a wealthy drug manufacturer, Dugene Schieffelin, released about 60 imported starlings in New York’s Central Park in his project to establish all of the birds mentioned in the plays of Shakespeare in the United States. It was a classic example of romantic human ignorance resulting in ecological disaster."