|
Male
Starling
This method is only an indication of gender, and
is not 100 percent accurate.
Look at your bird's eye in sunlight, with magnification
(if necessary) so that your eye is no more than
10" away from the bird's. The camera flash
exaggerated the brightness of the male's mottled
iris; it will be just barely lighter than the
dark pupil. (The camera is also sensitive to near-ultraviolet,
which starlings see, but our eyes can't. This
makes the male's iris look lighter than it would
appear to us.)
Female
Starling
Photographs
courtesy of Bill Lee
The female's iris ring IS visible to our eyes
as separate from the pupil. It has boundaries
that are a little more sharp than shown, and its
line thickness changes as the eye adjusts to changing
light.
The
bird (in the front) in the picture below is a
DNA sexed male, but has the brown eye ring.
Photograph
courtesy of Jennifer
Between 3 and 7 percent of non-juvenile starlings
have conflicting iris and bill color characteristics.
[Pyle, P. 2001. Identification Guide to North
American Birds]
|
The
photo below shows an example of an adult
male
starling (Piper) singing with the hackle
feathers raised.
|
Photograph
courtesy of Jill Soha
Some
additional ways of sexing a starling:
- By
the length of the hackle feathers. (See photo
above.) Measuring only the iridescent portion
of these feathers under the throat, adult males
have the longest (11mm) adult females and first
year birds the shortest (5.5-11mm). (Kessel
1951)
- For
birds in breeding condition, shown by a yellow
bill, the base of the lower mandible is bluish
or blue-gray in males, and pinkish in females.
- Under
wing coverts are very dark or black in adult
males and brown or gray in females, but this
can vary among individuals. (Suthers 1978)
- Males
are heavier than females. Estimates of normal
male mass is 73-96 grams, females average 69-93
grams. (Hicks 1934, Blem 1981)
|
