Red-billed Starling Spodiopsar sericeus 絲光椋鳥
Category I. Abundant winter visitor to open country areas though the range appears to be reducing. A few breeding records in village houses and an urban park.
IDENTIFICATION
Nov. 2016, Guy Miller. Male.
23–26 cm. Medium-sized starling. Male has creamy head, pale grey mantle, back, breast and flanks and whitish belly centre and undertail coverts. Wings are black with bluish gloss, the bases of the primaries white. The tail is black glossed green. Legs orange and bill largely red.
Dec. 2013, Martin Hale. Female.
Female similar to male but duller, with head, breast and underparts tinged brown and less contrast between head and body.
Oct. 2022, Paul Leader. Male & female in flight with White-cheeked Starlings.
In flight has white bases to primaries forming a patch that is larger on the paler and greyer male. This, the uniform upperparts lacking a pale rump, the pale-headed appearance, particularly of the male, and the greater contrast of the dark wings with the paler body distinguish from White-cheeked Starling.
VOCALISATIONS
Vocalisations are moderately harsh. Frequently calls, especially when in flocks.
The alarm call is a harsh, drawn out ‘skaaar’, slightly higher-pitched than the equivalent call of White-cheeked Starling.
Flocks in flight often utter a cacophony of sound.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Favours open habitats in lowland areas and coastal sites where trees are available for refuge and roosting. Often associated with fish ponds where food in the form of spilled or waste fish meal is available. Also forages at the edge of reed beds, freshwater marsh and in both natural and man-made watercourses.
The large wintering population is concentrated in the northwest New Territories, mainly at Mai Po, Lok Ma Chau, San Tin, Lut Chau and Tai Sang Wai. Regularly occurs in smaller numbers at other sites such as Long Valley, Nam Sang Wai and Shuen Wan. Also irruptive in areas such as Tai Po coast, Sha Tin, Shek Kong and Nam Chung, where more than 300 birds have been encountered in some years. Low numbers are recorded away from the New Territories, with only occasional sightings on HK Island (e.g., Mount Davis), Lantau (e.g., Shui Hau, Pui O), Po Toi and Cheung Chau. Previously abundant in Starling Inlet but there are very few records since 2000.
Breeding has occurred or been suspected based on behaviour and date at Kowloon Park, Tai Mei Tuk and Hung Shui Kiu. In addition, double-figure estimates of juveniles have been made in the Deep Bay area midsummer indicating that a larger breeding population exists regionally, presumably in or near Shenzhen, Guangdong.
The winter atlas surveys of 2001-05 and 2016-19 indicated a reduction of 59% in the range of Red-billed Starling. The wintering population in Kam Tin, in particular, experienced a marked decrease due to habitat loss; while records of over 1,000 birds were not uncommon before 2010, there were very few such records by 2020.
OCCURRENCE
Red-billed Starling is a common to locally abundant winter visitor mainly from November to March and a rare breeding species (Figure 1).
Before a breeding population became established regionally, Carey et al. (2001) stated that in most years the first Red-billed Starlings appeared during the third week of October, the earliest date being 5 October 1978, and there was a peak in numbers during the first half of November. Since 1999, however, the pattern has been for numbers to remain relatively low in early November and to increase rapidly around the middle of the month to reach a peak in early December.
Winter numbers decline gradually to the third week of March and subsequently the species is rarely reported away from the few breeding sites. Carey et al. (2001) reported the latest record to be one on 28 April 1997, apart from a midsummer record in June 1985. Increasingly, however, flocks are recorded midsummer in the Deep Bay area with the highest count being 120. Flocks of both Red-billed and White-cheeked Starling are also present at Fu Tian, Shenzhen in the summer, and there is no doubt overlap with the birds that occur there.
The high number for the last week of December indicated in Figure 1 is partly a result of the peak count for the species of 11,260 flying to roost on 25 December 2006. Red-billed Starling appears to have been very numerous in the 2006/07 winter, with counts of 6,509 on 15 January 2007 and 3,637 as late as 13 March.
The highest counts outside the northwest New Territories fishpond areas are 1,868 at Kam Tin on 3 February 2007 and 1,000 along Tai Po seafront in winter 2003/04.
Red-billed Starling was recorded in what is now the New Territories by Swinhoe (1861). Herklots (1953) knew it as a scarce winter visitor, whereas Dove and Goodhart (1955) encountered flocks regularly in the northern New Territories and Walker (1958) considered it a common winter visitor between 5 October and 31 March.
Numbers have increased significantly since the 1980s. It may be that this species has benefited from the combination of the protection of roost sites in the Deep Bay mangroves and the feeding opportunities provided by fish farming and, formerly, duck farming, but other factors may also be involved. However, it may be that further intensification of fish farming will not benefit the species in the same way as spillage of feed is minimized via the use of automatic feed distributors.
BREEDING
Breeding was first recorded in 2007 and 2008 at Tai Mei Tuk, near Tai Po; it occurred again in 2015 and was suspected there in 2019. In 2016 breeding occurred at Kowloon Park where up to three each of males, females and juveniles were seen; it possibly also occurred in 2020. Finally, in 2017 at Hung Shui Kiu breeding probably occurred.
Nests have been recorded in tree holes, cavities in the roof or wall of village houses and under air-conditioning units. Nest-building has been recorded from late April to late June; locally-reared juveniles have been seen in June, including four fledged young with their parents on 7 June 2015.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Sometimes associates with other starlings, notably White-cheeked Starling, but also Crested Myna. Highly vocal and noisy.
Forms some of the largest conspecific non-roosting passerine flocks in HK. Also roosts communally, though the whereabouts of the largest of these, which are in the Deep Bay area, is unknown; it could be in the mangroves. Roosts elsewhere have been recorded in large banyan trees at Tai Po Waterfront Park and Tai Po Industrial Estate and plantation trees at Braemar Hill, HK Island.
Omnivorous and opportunistic when foraging. Has been recorded feeding on the flower petals of Bauhinia x blakeana, the fruit of Ficus microcarpa, F. superba, Schefflera heptaphylla, Sapium sebiferum, Melaleuca sp. and Cinnamomum camphora, the nectar of Bombax ceiba and insects. They also take advantage of grain or other food provided for fish and will even enter huts to find spilt food. Prefers to feed on ground more than its congeners.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Mainly occurs in southeast China from Sichuan, south of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) to Shanghai, south to Hainan and Guangdong; in the non-breeding season it occurs in north Vietnam, Taiwan (Craig et al. 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend stable.
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Craig, A. J. F., C. J. Feare, and E. de Juana (2020). Red-billed Starling (Spodiopsar sericeus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.rebsta1.01
