Common Starling

This page is about the Common Starling, Sturnus vulgaris: simply the Starling in Britain and the European Starling in North America.

From a distance a Starling looks black. Close up it is glossy, with a sheen of purple and green, and in winter it is covered in white spots. It is smaller than a Blackbird, with a short tail, a pointed head and triangular wings, and on the ground it walks and runs rather than hops.

A Starling is about 21 cm (8 in) long, with a wingspan of 37 to 42 cm (about 15 to 16.5 in). Live adults weighed by BTO ringers average 85 g (3 oz), males a little heavier than females.¹

A Starling turns from spotted to glossy without growing new feathers. It moults once a year, in late summer. The new feathers have pale tips, white on the underparts and buff on the back, so in autumn the bird is spangled all over. Through the winter the tips wear away, and by spring it is glossy black with a purple and green sheen.²

The bill changes too: dark in winter, yellow in spring and summer. In one American study males' bills began to turn yellow in late December, followed by females' and then young birds'.

Males and females look much alike. In spring and summer, look at the base of the bill: blue-grey in males, pinkish in females. Close up, a female also has a narrow, paler ring round the edge of the iris; a male's eye is all dark.² Photos and more ways to tell them apart: female Starlings.

Young Starlings look quite different: plain grey-brown, paler on the throat, with a dark bill. From late summer they moult into spotted adult plumage, and for a few weeks they look patchy, with spotted bodies and brown heads. More: baby Starlings.

A male Blackbird is black with a yellow bill too, but he is bigger, with a long tail, no spots or gloss, and a yellow ring round the eye. Blackbirds hop; Starlings walk.

In North America the usual mix-up is the Common Grackle. It is bigger, 28 to 34 cm (11 to 13.4 in), with a long tail creased down the middle and whitish-yellow eyes. See European Starling vs Common Grackle.

Starlings are noisy. The song is a long, rambling mix of whistles, warbles, clicks, chatters and rattles, often with copies of other birds slipped in. A singing male often waves his wings as he sings, especially when a female is near.

You can hear Starlings singing in any month: least in late summer, when they moult, and most early in the breeding season. Females sing too, more quietly, mostly in autumn.

The commonest calls are a purring prrrp as a bird takes off, harsh rattles and screeches in squabbles, and a metallic chip in alarm. The RSPB likens the simple call to an old rocking chair. Listen to recordings: Starling sounds.

In a way. Starlings are famous mimics. They copy other birds, other animals and everyday sounds: the RSPB lists phones, sirens and car alarms, and a Lapwing or Curlew calling from a rooftop may well be a Starling.

A single bird may copy up to 20 different calls, and both males and females can learn to copy human speech. In North America they often copy Killdeer, meadowlarks, Northern Bobwhite and American Robins.²

In towns, villages and farmland, and anywhere with short grass to feed on: lawns, parks, playing fields and pasture. In the breeding season the BTO records them most often in towns. In the last national atlas they were found in 91% of the UK's 10-km squares, in summer and in winter.¹

Look on lawns, where a feeding flock works across the grass, stabbing at the turf; on chimneys, TV aerials and treetops, where Starlings sing and click; and in the late afternoon in winter, when flocks gather before going to roost.

British Starlings mostly stay put all year. But in autumn birds arrive from northern Europe and Scandinavia to spend the winter here, and numbers rise dramatically.¹

Across Europe, Starlings in the north and east migrate, while those in the south and west, Britain included, tend to stay. Western migrants mostly head west, wintering from the British Isles south to Iberia and north Africa, mainly from October to March. They are among the earliest birds to head back in spring.²

A Starling ringed in Suffolk in November 1983 was found in Russia, 2,122 km away, in July 2001.³

Starlings are not native to North America. The population is usually traced to birds released in Central Park, New York, in 1890 and 1891, and they had spread to nearly every US state and Canadian province by the late 1940s.² People also took them to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In the north of their American range many move south for the winter; south of about 40°N they rarely migrate.

The often-told story that the man behind the release, Eugene Schieffelin, wanted to bring every bird in Shakespeare to America is almost entirely fiction, built up in later retellings, and the neat story of a single founding flock is less certain than it sounds.⁴

They are called invasive mainly because they compete with native birds for nest holes, taking them over from bluebirds, woodpeckers, Tree Swallows and others, and because big flocks damage crops. Yet when a 2003 study compared 27 native hole-nesting species before and after Starlings arrived, only sapsuckers showed declines that might be put down to them.⁵ The US Migratory Bird Treaty Act does not protect the European Starling.⁶ More: are European Starlings invasive?

Insects and other small animals when they can get them, fruit and seeds when they can't. Starlings feed mostly on short grass, hunting leatherjackets (cranefly larvae), beetle grubs, caterpillars, earthworms and spiders.

Watch one on a lawn: it pushes its closed bill into the turf and then forces it open, prising a gap to reach the grubs. In autumn and winter Starlings eat more fruit and seeds, from cherries, elderberries and blackberries to apples, pears and grapes, and they take grain, scraps and animal feed.

More, including what the chicks are fed: what Starlings eat.

Starlings come readily to fat balls in a hanging mesh feeder. The RSPB's July 2026 advice is to offer only small amounts of fat, suet or mealworms from 1 May to 31 October and to pause seed and peanuts then; to use hanging feeders rather than tables or trays; and to clean feeders every week.⁷

If Starlings crowd out smaller birds, tube feeders help: Starlings find them hard to use.

Starlings nest in holes: gaps under roof tiles and eaves, holes in walls and trees, old woodpecker holes and nest boxes. The male picks the hole and starts stuffing it with grass and twigs; the female finishes the nest.

In Britain first eggs are laid around 19 April on average, anywhere from 6 April to 30 May. There are usually 4 or 5 pale blue eggs, incubated by both parents for 12 to 15 days. The chicks leave the nest at 19 to 21.5 days old, and pairs raise one or two broods a year.¹

In the UK it is against the law to remove a nest that is being built or used: if Starlings nest in your roof, wait until the young have flown before blocking the gap.⁸ More: where Starlings nest and baby Starlings.

Starlings do almost everything in company: they feed, roost and migrate in flocks all year. Flocks are small in spring, while pairs are nesting, and grow to thousands of birds in late summer, autumn and winter.

They are also squabblers, best known for their quarrels at bird feeders. A rival is stared down with feathers fluffed and crown raised; in fights over food two birds fly up, kicking and stabbing, and males fight hard, sometimes to the death, over nest holes. A Starling's territory is just its nest hole and the area round the entrance; feeding grounds are shared.

Starlings sleep together in communal roosts all year: in reedbeds, scrub and trees, on piers and bridges, and on buildings in town centres. Roosts are smallest in spring and largest in winter, when the biggest hold more than a million birds.¹ In winter some fly in from more than 50 km away, and each morning they go back to the same feeding grounds.

Before settling, winter flocks often swirl over the roost in the displays called murmurations. Starling flocks turn as one, above all when a bird of prey is about. More: Starling murmurations.

A Starling that survives to breed typically lives about 5 years. About 69% of adults survive from one year to the next, and 52% of young birds survive their first year.¹ Hawks, falcons and owls take Starlings, and so do cats, rats and weasels; squirrels raid nests. More: how long Starlings live.

The oldest Starling on the BTO's list of ringing records for Britain and Ireland lived 17 years, 7 months and 25 days.³ The European record is a Danish bird of 22 years and 11 months⁹, and the North American record a Tennessee bird of 15 years and 3 months.¹⁰

In the UK the Starling is Red-listed, the highest level of conservation concern. There were about 1.8 million pairs in 2016, and the breeding population fell by 61% between 1995 and 2024.¹

Worldwide it is of Least Concern: it is one of the most numerous birds on Earth. Even in North America, where it was introduced, the Breeding Bird Survey shows numbers down by about half since 1966.

The BTO's analyses point to young birds. Fewer Starlings now survive their first winter, while nests do at least as well as they used to. Why is not fully understood. In the countryside, changes in livestock farming are thought to be largely responsible: less permanent pasture, where Starlings find much of their food, fewer cattle, drainage, and insecticides used partly against leatherjackets. About 60% of UK Starlings live in towns and gardens, where the causes are less clear.¹

A Starling nest box is one of the simplest ways to help: see where Starlings nest.