Warbla

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Cape Starling

Lamprotornis nitens · Family Sturnidae

Lamprotornis nitens

Family Sturnidae

Order
Passeriformes
Family
Sturnidae
GBIF occurrence records
324,660
Countries and territories with records
18
Cape Starling
Stuart Bassil from Norwich, England · Lamprotornis nitens -Kruger National Park, South Africa -adult and juvenile-8.jpg · CC BY 2.0 · Stuart Bassil from Norwich, England · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Recordings may be trimmed and re-encoded; photos are cropped and resized.
Play song · JMK · Lamprotornis_nitens_phoenicopterus,_roep_en_gevladder,_2022-09-26_10h26,_Pretoria,_a.mp3 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · JMK · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Recordings may be trimmed and re-encoded; photos are cropped and resized.

About this species

This species has 324,660 occurrence records from 18 countries and territories (GBIF, 21 October 2026). Most records come from South Africa (85.6%), Namibia (9.8%), Botswana (2.5%) and Eswatini (1.1%); together they account for 99% of the total. In South Africa, this species accounts for 0.7% of all bird records in GBIF.

The scientific name Lamprotornis nitens combines the genus name Lamprotornis with the species epithet nitens. The Warbla app catalog lists 22 species of the genus Lamprotornis; apart from this one, those with the most GBIF records are Lamprotornis bicolor, Lamprotornis chalybaeus and Lamprotornis superbus.

The catalog has GBIF record counts for 110 species of the family Sturnidae. This species ranks 6th among them; the family’s most-recorded species is Sturnus vulgaris. Its record count is close to the family average (340,966). The family Sturnidae belongs to the order Passeriformes, which has 6,193 species in the Warbla app catalog.

More birds in the family Sturnidae

Credits & data sources