Species archive — legendary
Bali Starling
One of the rarest birds on Earth — a snow-white starling with electric-blue eye patches, found only on Bali.
Leucopsar rothschildi · Critically Endangered
Legendary🦅 Bali Starling
★★★★★
Overview
The Bali starling, or jalak Bali, is the island's only endemic bird and its official faunal emblem. Pure white with black wing tips and a vivid bare patch of blue skin around each eye, it is one of the most beautiful — and most endangered — songbirds in the world.
Decades of trapping for the caged-bird trade drove the wild population to fewer than ten birds in the early 2000s. Intensive breeding and release programmes have slowly pulled the species back from the edge, making every wild sighting a genuinely legendary discovery.
Habitat
Wild Bali starlings survive almost entirely within Bali Barat National Park at the island's western tip, favouring open savanna woodland and monsoon forest edge. A second reintroduced population is establishing on the nearby island of Nusa Penida.
Countries found
Interesting facts
- 01
At its lowest point, fewer than 10 Bali starlings survived in the wild.
- 02
It is the official bird of Bali and appears on the island's 200-rupiah coin era emblems.
- 03
The species was only described by science in 1912.
- 04
Both parents share nest building, incubation, and chick feeding.
- 05
Its call is a sharp, chattering song used to defend territory in pairs.
Conservation status
Poaching for the songbird trade remains the greatest threat. Community-run breeding programmes on Bali and Nusa Penida have raised the wild population into the low hundreds — a fragile but real recovery.
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