714 MANUAL OF PHILIPPINE BIRDS. 
white, ashy gray posteriorly ; under tail-coverts white; under wing-coverts 
and axillars white; quills below dusky, ashy brown along the inner edge, 
the base of the quills white. ‘Bill bright red, with the tips white; feet 
orange; iris black, with a light circle.’ (David.) Length, 198; culmen, 
25; wing, 120; tail, 61; tarsus, 29. ° 
“All the males [in the British Museum], so marked, are of a delicate 
gray, and vary very slightly in the direction of a whiter or a browner head. 
A female collected by Mr. Reeves at Ningpo is altogether browner, rather 
more ashy on the rump; the gloss on the wings and tail less distinct; 
primary-coverts blackish brown near the base, white at the ends, with a 
central black streak; head whitish, ashy gray on sides of crown and hind 
neck; sides of face whitish, ashy on the cheeks; under surface of body 
as in the male, but light brown instead of gray. This specimen is 
apparently immature.” (Sharpe.) 
A solitary female of the silky starling was obtained on Calayan Island 
in November, 1903. Iris dirty white; legs bright yellow; nails yellowish 
brown; basal one-half of bill reddish yellow; terminal half dusky. 
Length, 216; wing, 118; tail, 71; culmen from base, 24; bill from 
nostril, 16; tarsus, 29; middle toe with claw, 30. 
729. SPODIOPSAR CINERACEUS (Temminck). 
ASHY STARLING, 
Sturnus cineraceus TEMMINCK, Pl. Col. (1827), 2, pl. 556. 
Poliopsar cineraceus SHARPE, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1890), 13, 41 and 
addenda, 665. 
Spodiopsar cineraceus OATES, Fauna Brit. Ind. Birds (1889), 1, 524; 
Mearns, Phil. Jour. Sci. (1907), 2, sec. A, 353. 
Luzon (Mearns). Eastern Siberia, Japan, China, Formosa, Upper Burma. 
“Coloration.—Forehead, crown, nape, and sides of neck black, the 
forehead streaked with white; lores, ear-coverts, and round the eye white, 
streaked with black; chin and throat dark ashy brown with paler and 
indistinct shaft-streaks; breast ashy, slightly paler than throat; sides 
of the body and thighs rufous ashy; abdomen and under tail-coverts 
white; back, scapulars, rump, and upper tail-coverts drab-brown with 
a broad white bar across the rump; tail drab-brown with broad white 
tips to all the inner webs of the feathers except the middle pair; wing- 
coverts and tertials bronzy brown; remainder of wing blackish, the 
primaries narrowly, the secondaries more broadly, margined with white 
on the outer webs; under wing-coverts and axillars white, a few feathers 
of the former partially margined with brown. 
“The youngest bird I have seen has the whole plumage russet-brown, 
the inner webs of the tail-feathers tipped with white, the quills of the 
wing edged with paler brown; the ear-coverts whitish; the chin nearly 
pure white. 
