426 
SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS. — PASSEBES— 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; biU 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. 
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 Icterida, 
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. (Lat. stur- 
nus, a stare or starling.) 
Starlings. Bill shaped 
somewhat as in Sturnella 
or Icterus, but widened 
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 fossa3; 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, 
