This is a sharp-faced, square tailed, fast-walking, boisterous bird. It is common, familiar, sociable and quarrelsome. Its pointed head and triangular wings are distinctive in flight.

Before their recent widespread decline, Starlings could often be seen in winter in huge flocks, drifting like smoke across the sky, sometimes numbering tens of hundreds of thousands. Such concentrations are rarer now because of changes in agricultural practice, yet in some town centres, tens of thousands can still be seen gathering in the winter dusk to roost on giant bridges and other man-made structures.