Chestnut-Cheeked Starling Agropsar philippensis紫背椋鳥
Category I. Scarce passage migrant to open country areas.
IDENTIFICATION
Oct. 2022, Geoff Smith.
16–19 cm. Small, short-tailed, pale-headed starling with pale rump. Adult male has a contrasting and irregular deep chestnut patch behind eye of varied intensity. Hind crown to back either tinged purple or solid glossy purple. The flight feathers, tertials, tail and greater coverts are tinged glossy green. White median coverts form a band in the wing. Outer tail feathers have white on the outer webs. Chin to breast and flanks pale grey, belly and undertail-coverts creamy white. Eye dark brown; bill black in breeding season, with pale base at other times.
Female and immature birds differ in having crown to mantle brown, rump paler, chin to breast and flanks pale brown, wing brown, median covert wing panel buffy white and tail brown with a slight mauve gloss.
VOCALISATIONS
The call is similar to but flatter than that of Daurian Starling.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Chestnut-cheeked Starling favours open-country habitat, and as a result the distribution very much reflects observer activity. Most records occur in the Deep Bay area and other localities in northern New Territories (e.g., Long Valley, Kam Tin, Tuen Mun, Fung Kat Heung), and it is regular on Po Toi.
OCCURRENCE
Chestnut-cheeked Starling has occurred from 3 April to 4 May in spring and from 28 September to 20 November in autumn (Figure 1), though the two records on the latter date are three weeks later than the previous latest, which occurred on 29 October. Main spring passage occurs in the last three weeks of April, while main autumn main passage occurs in the first three weeks of October.
First recorded on 28 March 1976, when an adult male was seen at Mai Po, there were only nine accepted records before 1999 but it has become more regular since then due to increased familiarity with non-adult male plumages and a rise in observer activity.
The majority of the sightings are of one or two birds. The highest count is five at Lung Kwu Tan, Tuen Mun on 10 October 2020. It is the rarest of the regular migrant starlings passing through HK, and the numbers recorded suggest that HK does not lie on the normal migration route.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Arboreal, typically roosting or feeding with other starlings. Omnivorous though no details on local diet have been reported.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Breeds in Sakhalin, Japan, south Kuril Island and an island off Vladivostok, Russia; winters in Taiwan, Philippines and north Borneo (Craig and Feare 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend unknown.
Figure 1.
Craig, A. J. F. and C. J. Feare (2020). Chestnut-cheeked Starling (Agropsar philippensis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.chcsta1.01
