Starling in the snow
We had the first snow of winter here in Yorkshire today so I spent a while trying to photograph garden birds in the snow. In Russia and Northern Europe Starlings are summer migrants and fly to places like Britain in the autumn to join our resident Starlings. After an autumn moult the feathers all have a pale tip giving the birds a spotty appearance like this. But these tips wear off by spring leaving them largely spotless. The dark bill will also be bright yellow by spring. The beautiful blue and green iridescence is not formed by pigments, but by refraction of light through a microscopically thin transparent layer on the feathers. Light reflects off both the front and back of this layer and the light travels slower through the layer causing minute phase differences in the light which creates colours. Miniscule differences in the thickness of the layers create different colours; blues or greens in this case. The same thing happens with a drop of oil on a puddle. Each rainbow colour is created by tiny differences in the thickness of the oil layer.
The original Old English name for this bird was "Stare" and from the eleventh century the "ling" part was added, but only for young birds of this species. The name Stare persisted in the literature until the late eighteenth century, after which the name Starling prevailed. Its scientific name Sturnus vulgaris translates as Common Starling, and it is still common, but is red-listed because of a more than 50% population decline in Britain.
Starling in the snow
We had the first snow of winter here in Yorkshire today so I spent a while trying to photograph garden birds in the snow. In Russia and Northern Europe Starlings are summer migrants and fly to places like Britain in the autumn to join our resident Starlings. After an autumn moult the feathers all have a pale tip giving the birds a spotty appearance like this. But these tips wear off by spring leaving them largely spotless. The dark bill will also be bright yellow by spring. The beautiful blue and green iridescence is not formed by pigments, but by refraction of light through a microscopically thin transparent layer on the feathers. Light reflects off both the front and back of this layer and the light travels slower through the layer causing minute phase differences in the light which creates colours. Miniscule differences in the thickness of the layers create different colours; blues or greens in this case. The same thing happens with a drop of oil on a puddle. Each rainbow colour is created by tiny differences in the thickness of the oil layer.
The original Old English name for this bird was "Stare" and from the eleventh century the "ling" part was added, but only for young birds of this species. The name Stare persisted in the literature until the late eighteenth century, after which the name Starling prevailed. Its scientific name Sturnus vulgaris translates as Common Starling, and it is still common, but is red-listed because of a more than 50% population decline in Britain.