Starling Identification Northern Spain, April 2023 (1 Viewer)

[Paul Chapman]

Like many, I twitched the "Scilly Starling" in 1998. Such things are easy in hindsight but whilst I have an understanding of the capacity for Common Starlings to be relatively unmarked, I am not certain exactly on the capacity for Spotless Starlings to be spotty.

We still await the first for Britain or Ireland of what surely is an expected vagrant (from the northern French records and increasing range).

So that was the context for looking at a few starlings in Spain where Common seemed still present regularly in and around Barcelona and where Spotless was the only starling recorded by me inland and around Madrid.

The first is a Common Starling from Barcelona and the next four Spotless Starlings from near Madrid and Valencia but the one that interested me is in the last two photos also from Valencia.

The bird on the right is clearly a male Spotless Starling with very little if any spotting. The bird on the left is clearly a female starling species with a great deal of spotting but also bright bubble gum coloured legs. On the spotting and in particular the crown spotting, I decided that the bird had to be a female Common Starling.

Am I wrong as the leg colour in particular makes me hesitant?

All the best

Paul

 

[Alexander Stöhr]

Hello Paul,
thanks for sharing your excellent pictures!

Like you, I hope for more informed comments about Spotless Starling identification (and its a long time I saw my last ones), but I would ID the bird you asked for (picture 001 and 005) as a female Spotless Starling.
Excellent picture quality and direct sunlight makes judgement of the oilish overlay in the dark parts judgeble (really??? I am surely biased by location). And the white spots are really tiny. Is the crown spotting really out of variation for a Spotless Starluing?
But yes, its surely one of those birds that would either be overlooked or very hard to be acceptable in a vagrant context.

Conclusion? Thanks again for sharing those educational and helpful pictures here on BF. And I hope for confirmation or correction

 

[Paul Chapman]

Hello Paul,
thanks for sharing your excellent pictures!

Like you, I hope for more informed comments about Spotless Starling identification (and its a long time I saw my last ones), but I would ID the bird you asked for (picture 001 and 005) as a female Spotless Starling.
Excellent picture quality and direct sunlight makes judgement of the oilish overlay in the dark parts judgeble (really??? I am surely biased by location). And the white spots are really tiny. Is the crown spotting really out of variation for a Spotless Starluing?
But yes, its surely one of those birds that would either be overlooked or very hard to be acceptable in a vagrant context.

Conclusion? Thanks again for sharing those educational and helpful pictures here on BF. And I hope for confirmation or correction

This is really interesting. I'll wait for more comments but on balance, that is my thought process. I think that I was swayed by the annotation in the Collins Guide on the pics on the crown spotting whereas the text says that the crown is "usually unspotted"...

All the best

Paul

 

[vergan]

I am travelling and thus in my phone, ao while cannot see the images properly, just to remind that both species are known to onterbreed in overlapping areas of Spain, so any edge combination of field marks should better be treated as potential hybrids?.
Cheers

 

[Paul Chapman]

I am travelling and thus in my phone, ao while cannot see the images properly, just to remind that both species are known to onterbreed in overlapping areas of Spain, so any edge combination of field marks should better be treated as potential hybrids?.
Cheers

Not sure that there are in truth any hybrid characters here but I did spend some time reading the Birding World article on a captive bred hybrid (Birding World Vol. 11 No. 12 pages 474 to 476).

Many thanks

Paul

 

[THE_FERN]

I think we'd expect some brownish to be evident in the "white" spots by now if it were common: bill has breeding colours. Legs are equivocal for me: certainly not the bubblegum pink I associate with spotless