Expedition 🇮🇩 Indonesia
Bali Starling in Indonesia
One of the rarest birds on Earth — a snow-white starling with electric-blue eye patches, found only on Bali.
Legendary🦅 Bali Starling
★★★★★
The species
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.
Habitat in Indonesia
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.
Where to spot one
Tanjung Puting National Park
Central Kalimantan, Borneo
Riverboat safaris through peat-swamp forest with near-guaranteed orangutan sightings at feeding stations along the Sekonyer River.
Komodo National Park
East Nusa Tenggara
The only place on Earth to see wild Komodo dragons, patrolling savanna hillsides between pink-sand beaches and manta-filled reefs.
Bali Barat National Park
West Bali
The last wild stronghold of the Bali starling, alongside rusa deer, langurs, and over 160 other bird species.
Gunung Leuser National Park
North Sumatra
One of the last places where orangutans, tigers, elephants, and rhinos still share the same rainforest.
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.
Free on iOS
Log the Bali Starling in Indonesia
A legendary discovery waiting in the field.
