The Forward March

Seventy years ago today, on December 1, 1946, Ben and Lula Coffey with Mr. and Mrs. B.F. McCarney discovered the largest flock of European starlings ever seen to that date in Mexico.

Naumann, European starlings

This was not the first record for the country, but the band of 500 individuals encountered just south of Nuevo Laredo was some 20 times the cumulative total reported since the species’ arrival in Mexico a dozen years earlier.

The rest is history, as they say.

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