I30 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



When paired, they select some hole in a tree, some crevice 

 under the fenman's cottage, where their four or five com- 

 monplace eggs are laid, and then both birds go busily 

 a-marsh for wire-worms, earth-worms, grubs, moths, midgets, 

 cankers, and butterflies, to feed their greedy, noisy, rude nest- 

 lings, their noisy chatter and din crazing many a cottager 

 so that he will often shoot one or both. Should the hen 

 be shot, the cock still goes on bringing up the garrulous 

 young, for they do not leave their nest before they can fly 

 well enough ; they are too careful of their skins for that ! 



As soon as they can fly, away they go, old and young, 

 in noisy flocks, to the marshes, to live on cattle excrement 

 and parasites, or occasionally to make incursions into the 

 fenman's garden to steal cherries ; but the old marshman is 

 soon after them with a curse and an ounce of shot, killing 

 or maiming them. But then a cat won't touch them ; they 

 are such vermin. Pussie will scarcely deign to kill starlings 

 for fun, and he certainly would as soon think of eating 

 them as you would of eating carrion crow, although, on the 

 other hand, I have known old smelters make pie of them. 



In the early summer you may find them up at all hours of 

 the night, for they sleep upon the grass marshes near the 

 flocks and herds till the young reeds are tasselled just after 

 harvest, when they take flight to the reed-bed, and 'tis then 

 the damage is done, for their filthy bodies weigh down the 

 dainty and elegant reed stems, and break them. That is, 

 if the watchman of the marsh crop do not, with rusty 

 old muzzle-loader, keep firing at dusk to scare the circling 

 flocks away. One starling settling on a young harvest reed 

 will break it in the middle and so cross-lay it ; but when the 

 reed is sere and ripe, three or four birds will not injure a 

 stalk ; and the watchman knows this well, for he only guards 

 the swamp crop whilst young. Later on, when the sere reed 

 is circled with ice, he does not disturb them, and you may any 

 winter night, just as the red sun sinks adown the grey sky, 

 see flocks upon flocks come spreading across the grey for 



