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Common Starling | Sturnus vulgaris
Spreeuw | Estornino Pinto
The Common Starling is a European bird released in Cape Town in 1897 that has since spread across the south of South Africa. It is closely tied to people: towns, villages, farms and fields, where flocks walk across lawns and gather in the evening at large roosts.
Voice
A varied song of clicks, chatter, whistles and creaks with much mimicry of other birds and sounds, often from a roof or aerial with quivering wings. The call is a harsh cheerr; in flight a soft prrt.
Recording: Uku Paal — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20–22 cm. A stocky starling with a short square tail, pointed triangular wings and a long, pointed bill. Breeding plumage is black with a strong purple and green gloss and few pale spots; the bill is then yellow, with a blue-grey base in males and a pink base in females. After moult the plumage gains broad white and buff tips, especially below, and the bill turns dark. The legs are reddish brown. Juveniles are plain grey-brown with a paler throat and a dark bill.
Confusion species
Common Myna Acridotheres tristis is larger and brown, with a yellow bill, yellow bare skin behind the eye and white wing patches. Cape Starling Lamprotornis nitens is glossy blue-green without spots, with a longer tail and a yellow eye. Red-Winged Starling Onychognathus morio is larger and long-tailed, with rufous primaries that show in flight. Juvenile Common Starlings can suggest Wattled Starling Creatophora cinerea, but that has a pale rump and black wings and tail.
Habitat
Towns, villages, gardens, parks, sports fields, farmyards and farmland, especially short grassland and grazed pasture. It walks and probes the soil for larvae and other invertebrates, and also eats fruit and scraps. It breeds in cavities in buildings, trees and nest boxes.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In the region only in South Africa: numerous in the Western Cape and the west and centre of the Eastern Cape, gradually spreading into the southern Northern Cape and south-western Free State; odd birds further inland. Native to Europe and western Asia, and introduced by people to North America, Australia and New Zealand, among others.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
All year in the towns and cities of the Cape, often on lawns and sports fields. Roosts in reedbeds and urban trees draw hundreds to thousands of birds at sunset. Anyone seeing a Common Starling outside its known range should report it, as the spread is being monitored.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally. In South Africa an introduced species that competes with native hole-nesters and can damage fruit crops and vineyards; it is still slowly spreading.
Scientific name
Sturnus vulgaris | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Sturnus in that same work. Sturnus is the Latin word for 'starling'. vulgaris is Latin for 'common, ordinary'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.