Starling
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Starling
Bird
Collective name: a murmuration · also: a chattering
The starling is a glossy, chattering bird that gathers in enormous winter flocks called murmurations, swirling across the evening sky before roosting together. Speckled and shimmering up close, it is also a superb mimic that can copy everything from other birds to ringing phones.
💡 Fun Facts
- On winter evenings, thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands — of starlings gather into a swirling, shape-shifting cloud called a murmuration, twisting and swooping as one before dropping down to roost together.
- Up close a starling isn't simply black: its feathers shimmer with purple, green and bronze, and in winter they are dusted with tiny pale spots, like a bird wearing a sky full of stars.
- Starlings are brilliant mimics and can copy the songs of other birds, and even sounds like car alarms and ringing telephones.
📅 Through the Year
- Breeding:April to June
Name Story
Sturnus vulgaris
means “the common starling”
What does its name mean?
- sturnus — starlingLatin
- vulgaris — common, ordinary, everywhereLatinDecode this word →
Sturnus is simply Latin for 'starling', and vulgaris means 'common' — because starlings are everywhere, gathering in their thousands. There's nothing ordinary, though, about the swirling murmurations they paint across an autumn sky.