Spodiopsar sericeus
Silhouette: Rafael Maia · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~20%
The red-billed starling (Spodiopsar sericeus) is a species of starling in the family Sturnidae. It is found in south and southeastern China. The red-billed starling was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the starlings in the genus Sturnus and coined the binomial name Sturnus sericeus. The specific epithet sericeus is Medieval Latin meaning "silken". Gmelin based his account on the "silk starling" from China that had been described and illustrated in 1776 by the English naturalist Peter Brown from a specimen owned by the collector Marmaduke Tunstall.
The red-billed starling was formerly placed in the genus Sturnus. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2008 found that the genus was polyphyletic. In the reoganisation to create monophyletic genera, the red-billed starling and the white-cheeked starling were moved to the resurrected genus Spodiopsar that had been introduced in 1889 by Richard Bowdler Sharpe. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beijing Wildlife Park | 🇨🇳 China |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Red-billed Starling sighting in Hong Kong on a given day, based on 88 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 84th most-seen of the 204 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 20%, if each day is a fresh chance.
March and November
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Red-billed Starling in Hong Kong on a given day, against under 5% in April–October and December–February, the lowest months. Those are among Hong Kong's driest months, with about 50 mm of rain a month against 280 mm in June.
Between 3 and 6 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Red-billed Starling sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
25th of 31
Of the 31 cities where we can rate Red-billed Starling sightings, Hong Kong ranks 25th at under 5%. The best odds are in Nanchang (China, about 60%), Jinhua (China, about 60%) and Wuhan (China, about 50%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Red-billed Starling is recorded against all the birds logged in Hong Kong (88 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
