Common starling
The common starling, also known simply as the starling in Great Britain and Ireland, and as the European starling in North America, is a medium-sized passerine bird in the starling family, Sturnidae. It is about long and has glossy black plumage with a metallic sheen, which is speckled with white at some times of the year. The legs are pink and the bill is black in winter and yellow in summer; young birds have browner plumage than the adults. Its gift for mimicry has been noted in literature including the Mabinogion and the works of Pliny the Elder and William Shakespeare.
The common starling has about 12 subspecies breeding in open habitats across its native range in temperate Europe and across the Palearctic to western Mongolia, and it has been introduced as an invasive species to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and Fiji. This bird is resident in western and southern Europe and southwestern Asia, while northeastern populations migrate south and west in the winter within the breeding range and also further south to Iberia and North Africa. The common starling builds an untidy nest in a natural or artificial cavity in which four or five glossy, pale blue eggs are laid. These take two weeks to hatch and the young remain in the nest for another three weeks. There are normally one or two breeding attempts each year. This species is omnivorous, taking a wide range of invertebrates, as well as seeds and fruit. It is hunted by various mammals and birds of prey, and is host to a range of external and internal parasites.
Large flocks typical of this species can be beneficial to agriculture by controlling invertebrate pests; however, starlings can also be pests themselves when they feed on fruit and sprouting crops. Common starlings may also be a nuisance through the noise and mess caused by their large urban roosts. Introduced populations in particular have been subjected to a range of controls, including culling, but these have had limited success, except in preventing the colonisation of Western Australia.
The species has declined in numbers in parts of northern and western Europe since the 1980s due to fewer grassland invertebrates being available as food for growing chicks. Despite this, its huge global population is not thought to be declining significantly, so the common starling is classified as being of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Taxonomy and systematics
The common starling was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae in 1758 under its current binomial name. Sturnus and vulgaris are derived from the Latin for "starling" and "common" respectively. The Old English staer, later stare, and the Latin sturnus are both derived from an unknown Indo-European root dating back to the second millennium BC, imitative of the bird's call. "Starling" was first recorded in the 11th century, when it referred to the juvenile of the species, but by the 16th century it had already largely supplanted "stare" to refer to birds of all ages. The older name is referenced in William Butler Yeats' poem "The Stare's Nest by My Window". The International Ornithological Congress's preferred English vernacular name is common starling.The starling family, Sturnidae, is an entirely Old World group apart from introductions elsewhere, with the greatest numbers of species in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The genus Sturnus is polyphyletic and relationships between its members are not fully resolved. The closest relative of the common starling is the spotless starling. The non-migratory spotless starling may be descended from a population of ancestral S. vulgaris that survived in an Iberian refugium during an Ice Age retreat, and mitochondrial gene studies suggest that it could be considered a subspecies of the common starling. There is more genetic variation between common starling populations than between the nominate common starling and the spotless starling. Although common starling remains are known from the Middle Pleistocene, part of the problem in resolving relationships in the Sturnidae is the paucity of the fossil record for the family as a whole.
Subspecies
There are several subspecies of the common starling, which vary clinally in size and the colour tone of the adult plumage. The gradual variation over geographic range and extensive intergradation means that acceptance of the various subspecies varies between authorities.| Subspecies | Authority | Range | Comments |
| S. v. vulgaris | Linnaeus, 1758 | Most of Europe, except the far northwest and far southeast; also Iceland and the Canary Islands. Introduced to North America. | The nominate subspecies. |
| S. v. faroensis | Feilden, 1872 | Faroe Islands | Slightly larger than nominate, especially in the bill and feet. Adult with darker and duller green gloss and far less spotting, even in fresh plumage. Juvenile sooty black with whitish chin and areas on the belly; the throat spotted black. |
| S. v. zetlandicus | Hartert, EJO, 1918 | Shetland Islands | Like S. v. faroensis, but intermediate in size between that subspecies and S. v. vulgaris. Birds from Fair Isle, St. Kilda and the Outer Hebrides are intermediate between this subspecies and the nominate and placement with S. v. vulgaris or S. v. zetlandicus varies according to the authority. |
| S. v. granti | Hartert, EJO, 1903 | Azores | Like the nominate, but smaller, especially the feet. Often strong purple gloss on the upperparts. |
| S. v. poltaratskyi | Finsch, 1878 | Eastern Bashkortostan eastwards through the Ural Mountains and central Siberia, to Lake Baikal and western Mongolia | Like the nominate, but gloss on the head predominantly purple, on the back green, on the flanks usually purplish-blue, on the upper wing-coverts bluish-green. In flight, conspicuous light cinnamon-buff fringes to the under wing-coverts and axillaries; these areas may appear very pale in fresh plumage. |
| S. v. tauricus | Buturlin, 1904 | From Crimea and east of the Dnieper River eastwards around the coast of the Black Sea to western Asia Minor. Not found in the uplands, where it is replaced by S. v. purpurascens. | Like the nominate, but decidedly long-winged. Gloss of the head green, of the body bronze-purple, of the flanks and upper wing-coverts greenish-bronze. The underwings blackish with pale fringes of the coverts. Nearly spotless in breeding plumage. |
| S. v. purpurascens | Gould, 1868 | Eastern Turkey to Tbilisi and Lake Sevan, in the uplands on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, replacing tauricus | Like the nominate, but the wings longer and green gloss restricted to the ear-coverts, neck and upper chest. Purple gloss elsewhere except on the flanks and upper wing-coverts, where it is more bronzy. Dark underwings with slim white fringes to the coverts. |
| S. v. caucasicus | Lorenz, T, 1887 | Volga Delta through the eastern Caucasus and adjacent areas | Green gloss on the head and back, purple gloss on the neck and belly, more bluish on the upper wing-coverts. The underwings like S. v. purpurascens. |
| S. v. porphyronotus | Sharpe, 1888 | Western Central Asia, grading into S. v. poltaratskyi between the Dzungarian Alatau and the Altai Mountains | Very similar to S. v. tauricus, and like it, nearly spotless in breeding plumage, but smaller and completely allopatric, being separated by S. v. purpurascens, S. v. caucasicus and S. v. nobilior. |
| S. v. nobilior | Hume, 1879 | Afghanistan, southeastern Turkmenistan and adjacent Uzbekistan to eastern Iran | Like S. v. purpurascens, but smaller and the wings shorter; the ear-coverts glossed purple, and the underside and upperwing gloss quite reddish. |
| S. v. humii | Brooks, WE, 1876 | Kashmir to Nepal | Small; purple gloss restricted to the neck area and sometimes the flanks to the tail-coverts, otherwise glossed green. This is sometimes treated under the name S. v. indicus given by Hodgson. |
| S. v. minor | Hume, 1873 | Pakistan | Small; green gloss restricted to the head and lower belly and back, otherwise glossed purple. |
Birds from Fair Isle, St. Kilda and the Outer Hebrides are intermediate in size between S. v. zetlandicus and the nominate subspecies, and their subspecies placement varies according to the authority. The dark juveniles typical of these island forms are occasionally found in mainland Scotland and elsewhere, indicating some gene flow from S. v. faroensis or S. v. zetlandicus, subspecies formerly considered to be isolated.
Several other subspecies have been named, but are generally no longer considered valid. Most are intergrades that occur where the ranges of various subspecies meet. These include: S. v. ruthenus Menzbier, 1891 and S. v. jitkowi Buturlin, 1904, which are intergrades between S. v. vulgaris and S. v. poltaratskyi from western Russia; S. v. graecus Tschusi, 1905 and S. v. balcanicus Buturlin and Harms, 1909, which are intergrades between S. v. vulgaris and S. v. tauricus from the southern Balkans to central Ukraine and throughout Greece to the Bosporus; and S. v. heinrichi Stresemann, 1928, an intergrade between S. v. caucasicus and S. v. nobilior in northern Iran. S. v. persepolis Ticehurst, 1928 from Fars province in southern Iran is very similar to S. v. vulgaris, and it is not clear whether it is a distinct resident population or simply migrants from southeastern Europe.