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The starlings are generally a highly social family. Most species associate in flocks of varying sizes throughout the year. Murmuration is the flocking of starlings, including the swarm behaviour of their large flight formations. [8] These flocks may include other species of starlings and sometimes species from other families.
The Sturnus starlings are terrestrial species; they walk rather than hop, and have modifications to the skull and its muscles for open-bill probing. The latter adaptation has facilitated the spread of this genus from humid tropical southern Asia to cooler regions of Europe and Asia. Starlings nest in holes in trees or buildings.
Common starlings take advantage of agricultural fields, livestock facilities, and other human related sources of food and nest sites. Starlings often assault crops such as grapes, olives, and cherries by consuming excessive amounts of crops in large flock sizes and in new grain fields, starlings pull up young plants and eat the seeds. [122]
White-cheeked starlings are 24 cm in length. The adult male is mainly dark grey-brown with a paler belly and a whitish band across the rump. The head is blackish with whitish cheeks and forehead. There is a white border to the tail and white markings on the secondary wing feathers. The legs are pale orange and the bill is orange with a black tip.
The Daurian starling (Agropsar sturninus), or purple-backed starling, is a species of bird in the starling family found in the eastern Palearctic from eastern Mongolia and southeastern Russia to North Korea and central China.
Although starlings are a tropical family by origin, Tristram's starling is well adapted to living in a desert environment: it loses relatively little water to evaporation and produces less heat than expected for its base metabolic rate. Its dark plumage may help it survive in the desert winter, when temperatures are low but the Sun's radiation ...
A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2008 found that the genus was polyphyletic. [6] In the reoganization to create monotypic genera, the red-billed starling and the white-cheeked starling were moved to the resurrected genus Spodiopsar that had been introduced in 1889 by Richard Bowdler Sharpe.
The Madagascar starling (Hartlaubius auratus) is a species of starling in the family Sturnidae.It is endemic to Madagascar. [1]Commonly placed in the monotypic genus Hartlaubius, the Madagascan starling is also sometimes placed in the genus Saroglossa (as Saroglossa aurata), which otherwise only contains the spot-winged starling (S. spilopterus).