The Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) is a glossy, garrulous songbird known for its spectacular autumn flocking displays and a song that can weave together more than 80 imitated sounds. In breeding plumage adults are sooty black with an iridescent green and purple sheen and almost no visible spotting, while after the autumn moult both sexes appear starry, covered in pale spots that wear away through the winter. First-autumn juveniles look almost like a different species, plain greyish-brown with no metallic gloss at all.
Starling song is a long, improvised medley of whistles, rattles and clicks, richly laced with mimicry of other birds, insects, dogs and even mobile phones. Contact calls include a drawn-out, falling "tjüür", while flocks give sharp "tjett-tjett" alarm notes when a predator appears. The species is best known for murmurations, the huge, swirling flocks of tens to hundreds of thousands of birds that wheel in shifting patterns over reedbeds and farmland each autumn, most spectacular in October-November in Skåne and on Öland, functioning as collective defence against birds of prey. Starlings breed in cavities, tree holes, nest boxes and gaps in buildings, laying 4-6 unmarked pale blue eggs. Once one of Sweden's most familiar farmland birds, with a population still numbering 500,000-1,000,000 pairs, the species has halved since the 1970s and is now classed as Near Threatened, a decline linked to changing agriculture: fewer grazed pastures, tidier farm buildings with fewer nesting cavities, and declining insect abundance.
Read about this species in Swedish →