Magnificent star
| Magnificent star | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Glamor Star ( Lamprotornis splendius ), Kakun Nat. Park, Ghana |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Lamprotornis splendidus | ||||||||||||
| ( Vieillot , 1822) |
The splendid starling ( Lamprotornis splendidus ) from the genus of the actual glossy starlings ( Lamprotornis ) is a species of bird from the family of starlings (Sturnidae) and belongs to the order of the passerine birds (Passeriformes). It is a widespread bird on the west coasts of tropical Africa and in the tropical Central African states to Uganda in the east and northern Angola in the south. It feeds mainly on fruits and insects, worms and other invertebrates. The splendid star is divided into four subspecies.
features
Physique and plumage
The size of the magnificent starlings vary between 29 and 36 centimeters, with the female specimens being smaller than the male and reaching a wingspan of about 40 centimeters. Their weight is between 119 and 150 grams. The plumage on the upper side has uniformly strong iridescent metallic shimmering colors. Its plumage consists of so-called structural feathers, which evoke their colors by refraction of light without pigments. The special shine is caused by the melanosomes embedded in the structure of the feathers, which are under a keratin film. The special feature of these melanosomes are their platelet-like and hollow shape. The platelets are single or multiple layered or alternately (alternately) arranged. The reins and ear covers are black and the head cover is greenish in the front area and more bluish metallic in the rear. At the transition between neck and shoulder it has a golden-bronze spot on the sides. The bluish metallic sheen extends over the neck and shoulder and in the further course on the back the plumage changes into a light purple blue. The rump and the tail feathers are bluish green. The chin is bluish, turns into a light purple, which becomes purple in the upper chest area. In the further course, the chest and the belly turn purple again and a copper-colored band extends over the middle part of the abdomen. From there, the color changes back to a slightly violet blue. In the gorgeous star in Cameroon and Nigeria, the violet tones on the chest and stomach are considerably more pronounced in the male. The lower abdomen and tail take on a black-gray-violet tint in the further course. The legs and beak are dark gray to black. The colors of the females are less purple, especially in the abdominal area, but are clearly blue.
The plumage of the juveniles is greenish on the head and neck and already has shiny feather tips. From the shoulder area over the back to the rump, the young bird appears in bluish tones. The underside is predominantly in brown tones. The beak and reins and ear-coverts are dark brown. The wings and tail are shiny like the adult starlings, but the rest of the plumage has an even duller sheen and the wings are less emphasized. The young bird also has black feather tips.
eye
The iris of the eyes has a creamy yellow color, with the subspecies varying from almost whitish-yellow to orange-red. Like most bird species, except for the nocturnal birds, the magnificent starlings see their environment differently than we humans. In contrast to humans, the star has four and not just three types of photoreceptors (also called photoreceptors ) on the retina for color vision . In addition to the thinner rod-shaped receptors responsible for black and white vision, four cone-shaped receptor types are responsible for perception in starlings (tetrachromatic vision). Three of the four cone-shaped receptor types are responsible for the area of light that is visible to humans (trichromatic vision), which make the three primary colors red, green and blue visible. The fourth receptor is responsible for the perception in the area of ultraviolet light , which is not visible to humans. The incidence of light stimulates the various types of receptors within the strongly folded membranes, which are provided with different colored oil droplets, with different intensities. The responsible receptors react more or less strongly to the different wavelengths of light, so that the different colors and hues are perceived. The additional UV receptor compared to humans allows starlings to perceive our environment in a much more differentiated or different way. With the help of the UV receptors, the star is able to better and more easily recognize differences in other conspecifics, the degree of ripeness of the fruit or UV-reflecting traces that we cannot see.
Vocalizations
The splendid star is a loud bird that makes various sounds, including guttural and nasal calls and high-pitched whistling tones. It also imitates the voices of other species of birds, monkeys or humans.
.png)
Habitat and Distribution
The splendid star lives in open forests and gallery forests with tall trees along tropical rivers as well as on the edges of forests or on islands far off in mangrove forests, but also in parks and gardens with tall trees near settlements. It is usually found between sea level and 2000 m above sea level and in some regions of East Africa also at up to 2300 m.
The distribution area extends south of the Sahara from Senegal along the west coast of Africa via Gambia , Guinea-Bissau , Guinea , Sierra Leone , Liberia , Ivory Coast , Ghana , Togo and Nigeria . You can also find the splendid star on the islands of Bioko and Principe off the Congo Basin . A large part of the distribution area is from Cameroon via Equatorial Guinea and Gabon in a southerly direction down to northern Angola and in an easterly direction via the Republic of the Congo , Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Central African Republic , South Sudan , Rwanda , Burundi up to the states bordering Lake Victoria to Uganda , NW Tanzania and Kenya . Due to the deforestation of the highland forests in Kenya (1700 to 2300 m), the distribution there decimated drastically, so that the splendid star is hardly to be found. In large parts of Central Africa, the splendid star appears only rarely. The southernmost distribution area is in Zambia , which the splendid star uses as a breeding area. A separate area in the allopatric sense forms the highlands in the north-east of tropical Africa and the west of Ethiopia , where it is widespread. Overall, it is a large distribution area with an area of around 3.74 million km².
The subspecies are distributed over different regions and differ in their coloring from the nominal form Lamprotornis splendidus splendidus
-
Lamprotornis splendidus chrysonotis ( Swainson , 1837)
- Distribution area: from East Senegal along the coast to South Togo.
- Color: the front plumage of the head, neck and shoulders a little greener, the larynx and chest more violet-blue than purple and the bronze-colored chest band is narrower.
-
Lamprotornis splendidus splendidus ( Vieillot , 1822)
- Distribution area: Benin, Nigeria, Príncipe and Cameroon across to South Sudan and in the enclave in Ethiopia, south from west to east in the People's Republic of the Congo, North Angola, Central Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.
- Coloring: nominal shape
-
Lamprotornis splendidus lessoni ( Pucheran , 1859)
- Distribution area: Bioko island
- Coloring: in the upper area according to the nominal shape, the female has more purple tones in the upper chest area and the bronze-colored band is narrower and sits a little lower on the stomach.
-
Lamprotornis splendidus bailundensis ( Neumann , 1920)
- Distribution area: Northeast Angola, South Congo and Zambia.
- Color: the front plumage of the head, neck and shoulders are greener, the smaller wing feathers are blue and it has a purple band on the upper chest.
_Org._by_Ron_Knight-2011;_CC-BY.png)
Way of life and behavior
The glamorous star lives mostly resident but with regional and local movement patterns. It prefers to live at its resting places high up in dense, protective treetops at a height of 30 to 50 m. Very large swarms of tens of thousands of conspecifics were observed in his roosts. From there they break out during the day in smaller groups of up to a hundred birds to look for food, which in certain areas can also be larger in isolated cases. Often longer distances of 15–20 km are covered to the foraging areas. The groups look for a high, protective tree as a retreat and fly to the preferred fruit-bearing trees, which are usually 50 to 150 m away, for direct food intake. There they eat two or three fruits and take another one back to their retreat tree. There they eat the fruit they have brought with them and then choke up the predigested food and digest it more times. In the fruit-bearing trees they behave extremely quietly, whereas in the trees of the retreat areas, especially during the day, they behave noisy, for example to distract other related species or ground hornbills from their feeding place. They often stay there all day until they return to their sleeping places.
His preferred food is very dependent on the regional offer and consists of a wide variety of fruits such as those of the fig trees Ficus carica and other Ficus species or the species of the genus Xylopia , as well as Maesopsis , also known as the "umbrella tree", magnolia species, which occur in large parts of tropical Africa Pycnanthus , the nutmeg family Myristica , Dacryodes as well as the avocado trees Persea and various others . When it comes to protein-rich food, insects and other invertebrates such as ants, termites, grasshoppers, tree snails and even small lizards and small frogs are on the menu.
Reproduction
The Prachtglanzstar lays 2 to 3 eggs and nests in both solid, open-topped and spherical nests as well as in naturally occurring tree hollows, which can also be made by woodpeckers. In the tropical forests, the nests are often high above the ground between 8 and 37 m, but where the tree population does not allow this, they are also clearly below, as is usually the case in mangrove forests. The nests are made by the magnificent starlings from small branches, dry leaves and petioles, grass and the end pieces of climbing plants and other tendrils. The splendid star is considered to be monogamous and it has been observed in Gambia that he regularly uses his nests again, often even on the same day of the next year. The breeding seasons are very different depending on the region and the rainy season, so that they are spread over the whole year. In the western coastal regions this is mainly between December and May, in the central states more in the second half of the year and in the east of the continent more in the last months of the year and the first of the new year.
Hazardous situation
The deforestation of tropical forests and trees, especially in the East African countries, represents an enormous danger for the splendid star, with its complex way of procuring food, as has become clear in Kenya. The International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN has the splendid star in the Red List of Endangered Species due to its extremely large distribution area and, assuming that the population is not to be assessed as critical, as not endangered ( Least Concern )
Systematics
The splendid starling is within the genus actual glossy starlings (Lamprotornis) in a direct family group with seven other glossy starlings. Together with the sister species, the Prinzenglanzstar, it forms the basic group for one of the four clades of the actual glossy stars.
| Lamprotornis |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
literature
- AJFK Craig, CJ Feare: Family Sturnidae (Starlings). In: J. del Hoyo, A. Elliot, DA Christie (Eds.): Handbook of the birds of the world. Volume 14: Bush-shrikes to Old World Sparrows. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona 2009,
- Irby J. Lovette, Dustin R. Rubenstein: A comprehensive molecular phylogeny of the starlings (Aves: Sturnidae) and mockingbirds (Aves: Mimidae). Congruent mtDNA and nuclear trees for a cosmopolitan avian radiation. In: Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 44, 2007, pp. 1031-1056.
- Charles Hilary Fry , Stuart Keith , Emil K. Urban (Eds.): The Birds of Africa. Volume VI: Picathartes to Oxpeckers. Christopher Helm, London 2000, ISBN 978-01-21373-06-1 , pp. 610-612.
- Rafael Maia, Dustin R. Rubenstein and Matthew D. Shawkey in: Key ornamental innovations facilitate diversification in an avian radiation. Biological Sciences - Evolution: PNAS 2013 110 (26) 10687-10692; published ahead of print June 10, 2013, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1220784110 . Full text . Retrieved March 26, 2015.
- Frederike Woog Seeing and being seen - color vision of birds in: Der Falke - Journal für Vogelbeobachter 5/2009. ( [1] . Retrieved on July 11, 2015.)
- GE Hill & KJ McGraw (Eds, 2006): Bird Coloration. Vol. 1: Mechanisms and Measurements; Vol. 2: Function and Evolution .
- Colin Harrison & Alan Greensmith: Birds. Dorling Kindersly Limited, London 1993,2000, ISBN 3-8310-0785-3
- Bryan Richard: Birds. Parragon, Bath, ISBN 1-4054-5506-3
- Stevenson and Fanshawe: Princeton Field Guides - Birds of East Africa , Princeton and Oxford, 2002 ISBN 0-691-12665-8
Web links
- Photo by Lamprotornis splendidus splendidus on Flickr.com. [2]
- Photo by Lamprotornis splendidus chrysonotis on Flickr.com. [3]
- Internet Bird Collection: photos, videos and sound recordings. [4]
- xeno-canto: Sound recordings - Glanzstar ( Lamprotornis splendidus )
- Pro Wildlife: Wildlife trade - a deadly business. [5]
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j CH Fry, S. Keith, EK Urban: The birds of Africa. Volume VI. Academic Press, London 2000. pp. 610-612.
- ↑ Rafael Maia, Dustin R. Rubenstein, Matthew D. Shawkey: Key ornamental innovations facilitate diversification in an avian radiation . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 110 , no. 26 , June 25, 2013, ISSN 0027-8424 , p. 10687-10692 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1220784110 ( pnas.org ).
- ↑ Frederike Woog: See and be seen - color vision of birds. in: The falcon. - Journal for Bird Watchers 5/2009. ( Online ).
- ↑ a b c d e AJFK Craig, CJ Feare: Family Sturnidae (starlings). In: J. del Hoyo, A. Elliot, DA Christie (Eds.): Handbook of the birds of the world. Volume 14: Bush-shrikes to Old World Sparrows. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona 2009, pp. 654-760.
- ↑ BirdLife International (2015) Species factsheet: Lamprotornis splendidus . Downloaded from http: //www.birdlife.org.abhaben/ ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on August 11, 2015.
- ↑ Version 2015.2. ( Redlist ). Retrieved August 11, 2015.
- ↑ Irby J. Lovette, Dustin R. Rubenstein 2007: A comprehensive molecular phylogeny of the Starlings and Mockingbirds - Congruent mtDNA and nuclear trees for a cosmopolitan avian radiation. ( Memento of June 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) on columbia.edu, 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
