Bulletin 329 - South Africa #6 - Part 1 - Starlings, Thrushes, Oxpecker, Sugarbird, Duikers

I had an amazing 2 week trip to South Africa and scored almost 280 new species of birds as well as fantastic mammals and a few reptiles. My guide Casper Badenhorst was outstanding. You can see his web site here. He can be contacted through the web site or if you want his email it is info@birdingandwildlifesafaris.com. I recommend him highly as he showed me so many rare birds and animals. I will use him again when I go to Southern Africa.

As usual my birding luck was 100% and we saw almost every thing expected to be found and many that were not expected!

There are 118 species in the starling and myna family, all are in the Old World. Many of them are beautiful but the one chosen to introduce in America is not one of the beautiful ones. Any of these I would have preferred to the Common Starling in my yard at home. The 10" male Red-winged Starling (Onychognathus morio) is black with red outer wing feathers. The female is similar but dark gray instead of black.

Red-winged Starling - male

The 8" male Wattled Starling (Creatophora cinerea) is gray with black wings and tail, yellow on the face and black wattles below bill.

Wattled Starling - male

Many of the birds are iridescent and just glow in the sunlight. The stunning 7" male Violet-backed Starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster) appears to be just black above and white below, until the sun hits him.

Violet-backed Starling - male

The 8" Black-bellied Starling (Notopholia corrusca) is blue-black with yellow eye and dull black belly.

Black-bellied Starling

The last 4 are all the same genus. The 10" Pied Starling (Lamprotornis bicolor) is blackish-brown with white belly and vent.

Pied Starling

The 10" Cape Glossy Starling (Lamprotornis nitens) is also known as just Cape Starling. It is iridescent blue-green with a yellow eye.

Cape Glossy Starling

The 10" Greater Blue-eared Starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) is very similar and best told apart by voice.

Greater Blue-eared Starling

The last is the large 12" Burchell's Starling (Lamprotornis australis). It is similar but the eye is dark so that is the ID feature to look for.

Burchell's Starling

The oxpeckers are medium sized songbirds in their own family. They are endemic to Africa. They land on the big animals and eat any ticks or other insects they find. Interestingly, they may eat some flesh or drink blood in any wounds and may even open a wound themselves. So they help the animal with the insect load but are a bit of a parasite as well. There are 2 species and I only saw the 7.5" Red-billed Oxpecker (Buphagus erythrorhychus). It is a dark brown bird with beige underside, yellow eye ring and thick bright red bill.

Red-billed Oxpecker

Here is a Nyala antelope with several of them on his back.

Nyala and Red-billed Oxpeckers

Continued on part 2