Starlings and Mynas by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780713639612
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2016-04-22T05:00:00+00:00

63 RED-BILLED STARLING Sturnus sericeus

Silky Starling

Plate 13

Sturnus sericeus Gmelin 1788

FIELD IDENTIFICATION 21–24 cm. Adult males are largely grey with the head and nape white tinted with grey or ochre. The belly and undertail-coverts are white. Feathers of the head, neck and especially the upper breast are long and lanceolate. Wings and tail are black with blue-green iridescence. The bases of the primaries are white, forming a white patch on the wing. Females are duller and browner. The bill is red tipped black, the legs and feet dull orange to chrome-yellow. In flight, the wings are pointed, as in Common Starling.

DESCRIPTION Sexually dimorphic. Adult male: Forehead and crown are dirty white, the chin and throat white. The forehead, crown and hindneck feathers are somewhat elongate and hackled, the upper breast less so. The mantle and back are slate grey, paler on the rump. The breast and flanks are grey, the belly and undertail-coverts white. The feathers of the upper mantle, sides of the lower neck and, to a lesser extent, the upper breast, are somewhat darker than more posterior feathers, producing a slightly darker collar which contrasts sharply with the whiter head. The tail is black, glossed green. The primaries are black, glossed blue and purple on the outer webs of the inner feathers, and the bases of the primaries are white; the secondaries are black with green and purple gloss on the outer webs. The lesser wing-coverts are slate grey but with white margins to the outer feathers; the primary coverts have white outer webs, forming a white patch. The bill is red or red with a black tip; the legs and feet are chrome-yellow to dull orange; the iris is bluish with a white ring. Adult female: Similar to adult male but the tail and wings are browner but with gloss, and the head, breast and underparts are tinged brown, so that there is less contrast between the head and the rest of the body. The back is browner, rather than grey, but the rump is paler buffish. The brown of the back extends on to the nape as mottling, and on to the sides of the crown as a greyishbrown superciliary stripe. The sides of the chin have a greyish-brown moustachial stripe.

MEASUREMENTS Male/female (sample sizes not given): wing 118, tail 60, tarsus 29, bill 26 (du Pont 1971).

VOICE The song is described as sweet and melodious (Etchècopar and Hüe 1983). In flocks they make a chattering like Common Starlings (G Carey pers. comm.).

DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION Resident in most of China south of the Yangtze, including Hainan and west to Sichuan Province (Cheng 1987). It does not occur in western Yunnan, but appears in Vietnam and Hong Kong in winter, and has occurred as a vagrant in the Philippines and in Japan, where it may now occur annually (Brazil 1990).

HABITAT Inhabits hilly country and low altitude cultivated areas with scattered trees and groves, gardens and scrub, especially by the coast. They feed in trees and on the ground, but have not been observed associating with cattle (Carey pers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.