426 



SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS. — PASSERES— OSCINES. 



a bird differing visibly from the ordinary gray jay. The changes of plumage with age are 

 parallel. Size at a maximum. Length about 12.00; extent 17.00; wing and tail, each, near 

 6.00; bill 0.75; tarsus 1.30; middle toe and claw 1.00. S. Rocky Mt. region, especially 

 Colorado, Wyoming, N. New Mexico and Arizona, Idaho and Montana, northward shading 

 into typical canadensis. The high mountains of Colorado furnish the extreme cases. 



115. 



19. Family STURNID^ : Old World Starlings. 



A family confined to 

 the Old World : difficult 

 to characterize, owing to 

 the variety of forms it 

 includes. Apparently 

 related to the leteridce, 

 from which distinguished 

 by the presence of ten 

 primaries, the first short 

 or quite spurious. The 

 only form with which we 

 have here to do is the 

 genus Sturnus, belong- 

 ing to the 



28. Subfamily 



STURNIN/E: Typical 



Starlings. 



STUR'NUS. CLat. stur- 

 nus, a stare or starling.) 

 Starlings. Bill shaped 

 somewhat as in Sturnella 

 or Icterus, but Mndened 

 and flattened ; rather 

 shorter than head; cul- 

 men and gonys about 

 straight, both gently 

 rounded in transverse 

 section, and at the tip ; 

 the culmen rising high 

 on the forehead, dividing 

 prominent antise which 

 extend into the well- 

 marked nasal fossse; a 

 conspicuous nasal scale, 

 overarching the nostrils ; 

 tomial edges of mandibles 

 Fig. 277. — The Starling. (From Dixon.) dilated, especially those 



of the upper mandible ; commissure obtusely angulated ; sides of lower mandible extensively 

 denuded and somewhat excavated ; feathers filling the interramal space ; no bristles about the 

 bill. Wings long and pointed; 1st primary spurious and very small; 2d and 3d longest, 



