Starling disappointment--but still worthwhile

Yesterday afternoon we attempted to catch some Starlings which roost in the Belvide reed beds. Starlings are great birds for trainees because they are tricky to extract from nets and they are quite difficult to age and sex-until you get you eye in. As a consequence they carry a high 'tariff' on a trainees application for a C permit.

It will not have escaped readers that we've had rather a lot of rain recently and this meant that our usual net site was too deep--so Plan B was hatched. Unfortunately Plan B was not very successful and we only managed to catch 4 Starlings--and came up with Plan C for next time!!

Having only a small catch however can prove useful when trainees haven't ringed the species previously--and this was the case yesterday. We caught a selection of ages and sexes even within the 4, which proved useful as a training exercise.

Sexing is comparatively straightforward--males have a completely dark iris, while females of all ages have a lighter ring in the iris as shown in the picture

With a bit of imagination you can see the right hand bird has a paler outer ring round the iris showing it's a female. As time moves on, sexing becomes even easier as males develop a bluish tone at the base of the bill and females a pinkish base--ready for the breeding season.

 

Ageing however, is rather more difficult to assess and takes some time to get your eye in. Two of the main characteristics are the appearance of the throat and tail feathers.

 

First the tail. Starlings are one of the few species where both adults and juveniles undergo a complete post breeding moult; so we can't see any moult limits or tail wear features. Adult tails have a marked pointed appearance as shown in the picture

Juvenile tail feathers look more rounded

Adult male breast feathers ar probably simplest ti sort out in that they have long feathers with tiny white arrow heads on them:-

 

Juvenile males are very similar but the white tips are larger and broader:-

We didn't catch an adult female, but their breast can be confused with a juvenile male--but the female's iris is a good discriminator. Juvenile females have what I call 'white blobs' on their breast feathers:-

So, trainees all geared up for a bigger catch next time--in about 2 weeks--fingers crossed!