Howdy, friends. Our bird this week sounded really familiar, so before I began writing, I went into wordpress and made sure I hadn’t written it up before. This is the first time I’ve actually checked, I tend to just pick a bird or take a suggestion and assume I haven’t already covered it. Anyway, thankfully, I had not. This week’s subject, the superb starling, is merely closely related to a previous subject of ours, Hildebrandt’s starling. The superb starling is distinguished by its white eyes, and the adult’s white band across its chest. Hildebrandt’s starling has red eyes and no band.
The superb starling’s alluring blue and green coloration comes from the arrangement of melanin granules in its feathers, which means these are “structural colors” based on the shape of the feathers, rather than deriving from pigment. What we are seeing is the unique way that light bounces off those granules as opposed to which wavelengths of light are absorbed and which are reflected, which is the more common way color works. The birds are not sexually dimorphic, although juveniles have somewhat duller plumage.
The superb starling lives in a variety of subgenres of savanna, or mixed grassland-woodland, where trees are spaced far enough apart that a canopy does not form. They will also live in lakeshore woodlands as well as gardens and cultivated fields. They will live as high as 2,680 m (8,694 ft) above sea level, and avoid humid lowland areas. Their range, encompassing much of East Africa, is large. They can be found in Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Superb starlings are occasionally treated as pests because they can disrupt agriculture, particularly grapevines and wheat. Their diet is varied, consisting mostly of insects, but includes seeds, fruit, agave nectar and occasionally carrion.
During the breeding season, these birds are highly territorial, and will drive away other birds, especially if the intruders approach the starling’s nest. Outside the breeding season they are fairly gregarious, and will form flocks of up to 40 individuals with a variety of other birds, including Hildebrandt’s starling, inevitable WPT header subject the blue-eared glossy starling, and a couple of species of buffalo weavers. These groups will cooperate to find food and keep each other apprised of any approaching predators. A breeding pair will work together to build a nest, usually between 1.5 and 6 m (5-20 ft) off the ground. The nest is made of twigs and grass, and is protected by spines from thorny bushes. Nests can be built in such thorny bushes, but have also been seen in holes in trees and crevices in cliffs. The superb starling, in a superbly dick move, will sometimes evict white-headed buffalo weavers from their nests, hand has been known to reject any eggs left behind by the previous occupants. This apparently does not occur following every such takeover.
Newly fledged chicks may stick around in their home group or try to join a new one. Although mixing up groups and the breeding pool has obvious advantages, “newcomers” may experience conflict with longer-term members of the group for their entire lives. However, I found a recent NYT article (paywall-free link) that said that years and years of research on the superb starling found a remarkable level of cooperation within flocks, including both “legacy” birds and individuals who had newly joined. They all work together to feed and protect the chicks, and the data showed that birds will “pay each other back” for their help, repeatedly and years later. They will care for the young of other birds, even when they could be helping immediate family members. These starlings will alternate between spending a breeding season laying eggs and helping raise communal chicks, giving up their own chance to pass on their genes to make sure that the young of the flock live to maturity. All this hard work comes around. Birds that live in larger groups are likely to live longer and have more offspring. Such observations are of course only possible if there are years worth of data to analyze, this remarkable tendency wouldn’t show up in a year or two of observation. The article pointed out that this level of cooperation is somewhat similar to another collaborative lifeform that first lived in the unforgiving African savanna, human beings.
Have a good weekend, everyone. Be the splendid starling you want to see in the world.
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