Although the Sparrow and the Starling are on the conservation red list in the United Kingdom it is interesting that by comparison they are doing rather well in the United States. The European Starling was introduced into North America in the 1890s, and quickly spread across the continent. It is a fierce competitor for nest cavities, and frequently expels native bird species and is therefore widely regarded as a pest and has been blamed for a decline in indigenous bird populations, especially the infinitely more attractive Bluebird. The Sparrow and the Starling together with the Pigeon are the only three unprotected bird species in North America, they are all introduced and there are more of them than all the other birds put together.
The European Starling is resident in the US because in 1890, a wealthy American businessman, Eugene Schieffelin, introduced sixty Starlings into New York Central Park and then another forty the following year. In doing so he radically and irreversibly altered America’s bird population because today European Starlings range from Alaska to Florida and even into Mexico, and their population is estimated at over two hundred million.
