Chestnut-tailed Starling Sturnia malabarica灰頭椋鳥
Category I. Very rare winter visitor to open country areas. A small feral population is resident in urban Kowloon.
IDENTIFICATION
Dec. 2006, James Lam. Adult.
18.5–20.5 cm. Rather small, pale starling with dark-tipped wings and chestnut sides to vent and tips to tail feathers. The bill is blue with an extensive yellow tip. The subspecies likely to occur naturally in HK, S. m. nemoricola, has pale buff underparts.
VOCALISATIONS
Rather dry chattering notes are typically uttered.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Chestnut-tailed Starling favours open woodland habitats. Similar to other starlings, it generally avoids densely wooded and mountainous areas. The records considered to be of natural occurrence have occurred in the northwest New Territories and on outlying islands.
Small population feral populations are irregularly recorded in the following urban parks: Kowloon Park, Kowloon City Park and Kowloon Walled City Park.
OCCURRENCE
Records of birds considered to be of natural origin, which are listed below, have mainly occurred in winter.
1993: two at Tsim Bei Tsui from 22 January to 5 February 1993 (Tyzzer and Cooper 1994).
1995: up to two at Mai Po on three dates from 12 January to 26 February.
2004: one at Mui Wo on 17 March.
2007: one on Lamma Island on 20 January.
In addition, a pair took up residence at Kowloon Park from at least 15 May 1994 to 5 September 1996 (see under Breeding), and one was at Victoria Park on 16 February 1995. It was reported again from 4 November 2001 (though possibly present in the interim) with up to 12 recorded at Kowloon Park until 25 August 2017. Elsewhere, and presumably derived from the Kowloon Park population, up to ten were reported at Kowloon Walled City Park on during 22-24 December 2019 and two were at Kowloon Tsai Park from 16 May to 22 June 2020. All these are believed to refer to birds derived from ex-captive individuals. Finally, singles at Mai Po on 1 July and at Nam Sang Wai on 17 July 2011 are presumed to relate to the same individual but are not considered to be of natural occurrence.
BREEDING
Although the birds in Kowloon Park were seen entering a nest-hole each year from 1994 to 1996, the only occasion on which juveniles were seen was 2 July 1994 when two were recorded. Further evidence of breeding in the form of nest-building at the same site has occurred since, and also at Kowloon Tsai Park. Birds have been recorded entering nest-hole in trees in late April, while nest-building behavior was seen in May.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Arboreal. Usually in small groups in the main breeding area, the sightings outside Kowloon often concern single birds. Presumably omnivorous like other starlings, however, data on local diet are scarce.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Breeds from northeast India east to Myanmar, north and west Thailand, the rest of Indochina and southwest China; occurs in the non-breeding season in the rest of Thailand (except south) and Cambodia (Craig et al. 2023). Introduced to Taiwan (Ding et al. 2020).
Two subspecies are recognised: S. m. malabarica and S. m. nemoricola, the latter of which occurs in the eastern part of the range, including HK.
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend unknown.
Craig, A. J. F., C. J. Feare, and P. F. D. Boesman (2023). Chestnut-tailed Starling (Sturnia malabarica), version 1.1. In Birds of the World (B. K. Keeney, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.chtsta2.01.1
Ding, T. S., C. S. Juan, R. S. Lin, Y. J. Tsai, J. L. Wu, J. Wu and Yang, Y. H. (2020). The 2020 CWBF Checklist of the Birds of Taiwan. Bird Record Committee, Chinese Wild Bird Federation, Taipei. Downloaded at: https://www.bird.org.tw/report/2020/english
Tyzzer, I. and Cooper, G. (1994). Chestnut-tailed Starling: the first record for Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Report 1993: 136-138.
