Rosy Starling

The "rosy" as the name indicates the bird has pink plumage. They are native to central asia and eastern Europe. Migrates to India to winter. The are highly social bird and always be in group gathering to go for roosting or to migration. Thousands gather and form a bird cloud which looks like a folk of honey bees (for comparison to get visualization as I don not have a photo of them in group) travelling form a distance.

Quite noisy in their perch. They outnumber local starlings and mynas in india during winter when they migrate.

They are insectivorous and a natural way to control the farm pests as these birds prefer agricultural lands and other open areas. They are "without a second thought" farmer friend.

A small case study on rosy starlings (source Wikipedia) :

In Xinjiang, China, farmers used to use insecticide to eliminate locust, which is costly and polluting. In the 1980s, experts found that rosy starlings which fly to Xinjiang farms and feed on locusts could be used for control instead. The experts begin to build artificial nests to attract rosy starlings, an effort reported to be so successful that the number of locusts was insufficient to feed the birds, causing many juveniles die for hunger. By the 2000s many Xinjiang farms greatly decreased the usage of insecticide.


Think on why to use insecticides and pesticides when many like starlings are on job! They are pollution free and zero side effects....

Hoskote lake on 08.03.2015