White-shouldered Starling

The white-shouldered starling (Sturnia sinensis) is a species of bird in the starling family Sturnidae. It breeds in southern China and northern Vietnam; it winters in Southeast Asia. Taxonomy The white-shouldered starling was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the orioles in the genus Oriolus and coined the binomial name Oriolus sinensis. (Wikipedia, general species account).

The specific epithet sinensis is Modern Latin for "Chinese". Gmelin based his description on "Le Kink" from China that had been described in 1775 by the French polymath the Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. A hand-coloured engraving by François-Nicolas Martinet was published to accompany Buffon's text. The white-shouldered starling was formerly placed in the genus Sturnus.