Family Sturnidae

Starlings

Following the taxonomy applied to HBW Alive, derived from the recently published HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World, this family now contains species that were formerly considered to comprise the family Rhabdornis (Rhabdornithidae). See link for information on this group.

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General

Small to medium-sized passerines with slender to heavy bill; plumage coloration often black, or with brilliant iridescent structural colours.
Africa, Eurasia, Pacific islands, and north-east Australia; introduced in many parts of world.
Forest, grassland, scrubland, orchards, plantations, gardens, villages, urban areas.

15-45 cm.

33 genera, 123 species, 223 taxa.

15 species threatened;
5 extinct since 1600.

Systematics

The starlings are an Old World group, with notable radiations in Africa and Asia, including the successful colonization of many Pacific Ocean islands. The family name Sturnidae, proposed in 1815 by C. Rafinesque, is derived from the Linnaean generic name for the Common Starling (Sturnus...

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Morphological Aspects

Starlings range in body mass from about 35 g up to at least 290 g. None is truly tiny, nor are any of the family near the upper end of the size range for passerines, although the Nias Hill Myna (Gracula robusta) and the...

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Habitat

With a natural range extending from the Arctic Circle southwards to beyond the tropics, where some species range above 4000 m in the mountains, starlings are clearly not narrow habitat specialists. Members of the Sturnidae inhabit forest and forest edge, savanna and other grasslands, macchia,...

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General Habits

While some Asian starlings have been sighted only singly or in pairs, it is possible that this, rather than representing a distinctive type of social organization, may relate more to the difficulty of observing birds in the forest canopy, and perhaps the current rarity of the species concerned...

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Voice

Starlings are not usually rated as great songsters compared with such bird families as the thrushes, whose voices seem more musical to the human ear. J. P. Chapin described groups of Splendid Glossy Starlings as gathering “to practise the most marvellous discords”, and although many members of...

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Food and Feeding

Starlings are generally categorized as frugivores or insectivores, yet some take a wide range of animal food up to the size of...

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Breeding

Starlings are often considered to be typically hole-nesting birds, utilizing natural tree holes and also cavities made by woodpeckers or barbets, as well as equivalent spaces in artificial structures such as walls and roofs and, in a few cases, tunnels excavated in the banks of rivers or dry...

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Movements

Bird-ringing as a technique for studying migratory movements, using unique identification numbers for individual birds, began in 1899 when a Danish schoolmaster, Hans Christian Mortensen, started to ring Common Starlings in his village in an attempt to discover their whereabouts in the winter...

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Relationship with Man

The earliest interactions between humans and starlings were undoubtedly those of predator and prey. Archaeological work on Pacific islands has revealed that the first Polynesian settlers had a dramatic impact on island faunas, and precipitated many extinctions. Starlings are well represented...

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Status and Conservation

Island endemics are always especially at risk, and the five species of Sturnidae known to have become extinct in the past three centuries were all found on oceanic islands (see HBW7, pp. 54–55). One of these is the Norfolk Island Starling (Aplonis fusca), including the Lord Howe...

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General Bibliography

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Species list

List of species of the Starlings (Sturnidae) family. Each species provides information on taxonomy, descriptive notes, voice, habitat, food and feeding, breeding, movements, status and conservation and bibliography.

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A detailed list of the species of the family is displayed to our subscribers, showing the following columns: Genus, Species, Common name, Conservation Status, Figure, and the Check mark. Above the table, a tiny search engine is displayed to facilitate the filtering of the species.

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Family Sturnidae

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