Kenrick's Starling

About the Kenrick's Starling

Kenrick's starling (Poeoptera kenricki) is a species of starling in the family Sturnidae. It is found in Kenya and Tanzania. Kenrick's starling was described by George Ernest Shelley in 1894 and was named after Major Reginald Watkin Edward-Kenrick, an officer in the British army who collected the holotype in the Usambara Mountains in Tanzania. Shelley placed the starling in the obsolete genus Stillbopsar, which was composed of it alongside Stuhlmann's starling. It is now placed in the genus Poeoptera, meaning "poet bird" in Greek, with Poeo being a variation of the Greek poiéō which means "to create" - being the origin of poema, the Latin word for poem - and ptera coming from the pterá which means wing. Up until the mid 20th century, some authorities considered it conspecific with Stuhlmann's starling, or treated it as one single subspecies. There are currently two recognized subspecies:

Poeoptera kenricki kenricki - (Shelley, 1894): Nominate subspecies, described from the mountainous montane forests of Tanzania Poeoptera kenricki bensoni - (Van Someren, 1945): Found around the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya

Kenrick's starling is a medium-sized bird... Wikipedia →