Co-Geeking

The greater blue-eared glossy-starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) is a common bird in parts of Africa. It’s as handsome as handsome gets—absolutely gorgeous!

This stunning starling breeds in a band of land stretching from Senegal in the west coast all the way east to Ethiopia, and south again through eastern Africa to northeastern South Africa, northern Botswana, southern Namibia, and northern Angola. They live in subtropical forests, savanna, and shrublands.

I’ve always found the English name starling lovely—certainly lovelier than the Finnish one (kottarainen)—but the looks of the common starling haven’t, sadly, quite lived up to the name in my mind. Now, the greater blue-eared starling is quite something else! It would be so remarkable to see a turquoise-blue murmuration in a fantasy production, wouldn’t it?

Found via Herps and Birds on Tumblr.

Image by petermcintyre via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0)

The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?