132 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
Family—S TURNIDA:. 
THE STARLING. 
Sturnus vulgaris, LINN. 
ENERALLY distributed over the greater part of Europe, breeding as far to 
) the south as Northern Italy. The European birds which migrate, pass the 
winter in the south of France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Northern Africa, and 
Palestine. The Asiatic birds breed in Southern Siberia, Persia, Turkestan, and 
eastward to the Amur: they winter in India, passing through Mongolia on 
migration. 
In Great Britain the Starling is partially resident and generally distributed 
throughout Great Britain and Ireland, although in the latter island it is rather 
local in the breeding-season, and in Cornwall and Wales it is somewhat rare at 
that season. In Scotland, where it used to be by no means abundant, excepting 
in some of the islands, it is now very common in nearly every county. 
The adult male in breeding-plumage is glossy black, brightly shot with metallic 
green, rosy violet, and Prussian blue, the rosy and purplish tints being usually 
most prevalent on the head, nape, mantle, and breast; the bluer feathers varying 
in certain lights to Prussian green: the feathers of the upper surface, excepting 
the head and fore-neck, tipped with dead gold, or sandy buff; flights and tail- 
feathers dark smoky-brown, bordered with black, and edged with sandy-buff; thighs 
and under tail-coverts blackish, the latter with broad buff margins: bill lemon- 
yellow; feet reddish-brown; iris hazel. The female is less metallic than the male 
and has larger buff tips to the feathers, the under surface of the body being more 
or less spotted throughout the year; the bill is also blackish towards the tip. 
After the autumn moult all the feathers of the upper parts are broadly tipped 
with sandy-buff; the wing-feathers are greyer; and the sides of the face and under 
surface are more or less conspicuously spotted with white: * the bill also becomes 
partly, or altogether, dark brown. The young are greyish brown, the quill and 
tail-feathers margined with pale brown, and the feathers of the under parts with 
whitish margins. 
* A bird which I had a few years ago used to have these white spots on the under parts so large that 
many of them ran together into patches giving it the appearance of having faced a snow-storm. 
