Common Starling

The common starling is about 20 cm long with iridescent black plumage glossed purple or green and spangled with white, especially in winter; the legs are pink and the bill black in winter and yellow in summer, and young birds are browner than adults. It has about 12 subspecies breeding in open habitats across temperate Europe and the Palearctic to western Mongolia, and has been introduced as an invasive species to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and Fiji. It is widespread throughout the Northern Hemisphere and found in India, mainly in the north but regularly extending farther south and into the Maldives (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is resident in western and southern Europe and south-western Asia, while north-eastern populations migrate south and west in winter. It builds an untidy nest in a natural or artificial cavity, construction taking four or five days and possibly continuing through incubation, with four or five glossy pale blue eggs that take two weeks to hatch, the young remaining in the nest another three weeks; there are normally one or two breeding attempts a year. Its flocks are commonly called murmurations. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a winter migrant and localised summer migrant omnivore with a Moderate range of about 171,000 km² and a decline of about 57% over the long term (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).