Common Starling

How to recognise it

• Blackish with green or purple metallic gloss, in winter with white to buff feather tips
• Yellow bill in breeding plumage, blackish bill in winter plumage
• Short tail and triangular, pointed wings in flight
• Male has a dark brown iris and female a pale one, juveniles are grey-brown without gloss

Call and song

The song is sustained and chattering, with rising and falling piping notes, smacking, whistling and rattling sounds and mimicry, often of quail, buzzard and lapwing. It warns of flying predators with a rapidly repeated, sharp “spett, spett” and of ground predators with a drawn-out “brrrrrrrt” or “tschrrr”. A flying flock's whooshing wingbeats carry hundreds of metres.

Where and when

It breeds in Sweden and is partly migratory, and is reported from all 21 counties, most in March. Return migration starts in February, and in July starlings in southern Scandinavia already move to Germany and Denmark. It is densest where groups of trees with holes border meadows. It is red-listed as Vulnerable (VU), with just over 400 000 pairs estimated in 2018.

Food and behaviour

In spring and early summer it mainly eats insects, larvae, earthworms and small snails, the rest of the year mostly fruit and berries. On the ground it walks rather than hops. Starlings roost together, mainly in large reedbeds, and also in groves, dense thickets and town centres. The nest is mainly placed in tree holes, though nest boxes and cavities in buildings are used too.