The Starling in Eastern Mexico
The Starling in Eastern Mexico.-While Blake (Birds of Mexico, 1953) does not list the Starling (Sturnus vzdgaris) for Mkxico, other authorities (Mexican Check-list, 1957:219) report it variously for northern Tamaulipas or for northeastern MCxico “since 1939.” A review in Bird-Banding, 18, 1947:184, of Helmuth Otto Wagner’s “Sturnus vulgaris L. als Wintergast in Mexico,” Ornithologische Monatsberichte, 49, 1941:143-144, gives these records. “April, 1935 (circumstances not clear) ; December 1938, 2 at Anaxhuac, 50 kilometers east of Nuevo Laredo; 24 December 1939, ten at Santa Lucia, between Laredo and Monterrey.” A more recently published record is found in the Newsletter of the Texas Ornithological Society, December 9, 1953:f. L. Irhy Davis and party made an intensive bird count on January 1 and 2, 1953, at Tampico. The compiler, Edgar Kincaid, states, “Starling, 27 (some of these were in the state of Veracruz-apparently a new state record . . ) .”
On the return from a vacation trip, on December 1, 1946, Mrs. Coffey and I, with the B. F. McCameys, saw a flock of 500 Starlings south of and within sight of Nuevo Laredo. On December 12, 1948, we saw five in Linares, Nuevo Le6n. In 1956 we looked for the species especially around Tampica and Veracruz, without success. On December 3, 1956, while looking over blackbirds on a pasture in the outskirts of Coatzocoalcos, Veracruz, Mrs. Coffey spotted 15 Starlings. This was much farther south than we had expected to find the species.-BEN- B. COFFEY, JR., Memphis, Tennessee, January 15,1959.
