Species profile
About the superb starling
The superb starling is the bird every visitor to northern Tanzania meets on the first morning, hopping around the breakfast table with an iridescent blue-green back, orange-chestnut belly, cream eye and a crisp white band separating the two.
It is far more interesting than its familiarity suggests. Superb starlings live in cooperative groups in which non-breeding helpers raise other birds' chicks, and long-term study in East Africa has shown that individuals move between groups and build reciprocal helping relationships over years.
Life in the wild
Behavior & relationships
Behavior
Diurnal and highly social, feeding mainly on the ground in small parties and returning to thorn trees to roost.
Social life
Cooperative breeder. Groups of a dozen or more contain breeding pairs plus helpers, often unrelated, that feed and defend the chicks.
What makes it remarkable
Special features
A structural iridescence produced by feather microstructure rather than pigment, and one of the best-studied cooperative breeding systems in Africa.
