Nature Quest: A tale of purple-backed starlings
Bangladesh is a country of starlings, shalik being the most common species. Jibanananda Das, in many of his poems, has expressed his deep love and affection for shalik. A total of 12 species of starling are found in Bangladesh. Some of them, like shalik, are very common while some are uncommon. There is also the rarest purple-backed starling and this is the story of how we sighted a huge flock of them.
Very early one morning, I along with Bangladesh Bird Club president Dr Niaz Abdur Rahman, had visited the National Botanical Garden in Dhaka. Our target was to bird, with a special focus on a rare passenger migrant starling species. We found out the right spot, described to us by Dr Reza Khan who initially had sighted the bird in this vast garden on 16 April, 2015. It is the second photographic record of this species from Bangladesh.
On 18th April we saw a large flock flying very speedily from south to north towards the Durapara area. There were around 35 birds. After an intensive search, I found the starling flock on a Rain tree. We could hear their sweet songs that they were singing having alighted on the highest branches, remaining hidden in the tree's dense foliage. After a while some of them landed on a shewra tree to nibble at the ripen fruits. It was then we got a good chance to take a few pictures.
This photographic record in April indicates that they are perhaps passage migrants. The first record of this species was done by Rainer Schutt, a German ornithologist, in October 2009. He photographed them in the Sundarbans. It is a very good record.
Purple-backed starlings are highly social birds that move around in large flocks and in seeming synchronicity. They have a pale grey head and a purplish black patch on the hind crown, a purplish-black mantle and glossy greenish-black wings. They have a very short blackish tail and two whitish wing bars. Their iris is brown; legs and toes are tinged with green.
This bird is a vagrant in India and is also found in Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, China, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal and Indonesia. It usually breeds in May or June mainly in Russia and Korea. It is also known to breed in the Himalayas, Tibet, China and Mongolia; it migrates to south-east Asia and South Asia.
The species mostly prefers open woody areas and feeds on fruits, berries, nectar and insects.
The writer is a biologist .
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