192 BULLETIN 19 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Later, they learn to distinguish the approach of the parents and respond only 

 to their notes or appearance. Other noises or vibrations cause them to crouch 

 silently in the bottom of the nest, and no amount of coaxing will persuade one 

 of them to stir or make a soimd. 



Two broods are usually raised each year and sometimes there are three. 

 The first of these leaves the nest about June 1 and the second late In July. Fledg- 

 lings which may have been from either a belated second or third brood just from 

 the nest were collected as late as September 12, at Bay Shore, N. Y. 



As soon as the first brood leaves the nest small flocks of young starlings 

 can he found feeding on grasslands or roosting at night in trees or buildings. 

 These flocks grow rapidly in size and by mid-July often number into the thousands. 

 During the day no adult birds are found in these early flocks and very few appear 

 until after the completion of the molt In September ; both old and young, however, 

 occupy the same nightly roost. 



Lony B. Strabala (1926), of Leetonia, Ohio, spent a long day watch- 

 ing a pair of starlings feeding their young, on which he reports: 

 "During the whole day that I watched, * * * j g^^ them feed the 

 young 121 times." During the day he was away from the nest at 

 meal times for 2 hours and 50 minutes, but he saw them make their 

 first feeding at 4 :32 a. m., and their last trip at 7 :21 p. m. "They were 

 feeding their young fifteen hours and twenty-three minutes, they 

 made an average while I watched them of around 10 trips an hour so 

 in the whole fifteen hours and twenty-three minutes they would make 

 no less than about 155 trips in one day of which the male made 74 

 and the female 47 of the 121 trips I saw them make. The male carried 

 out excrement 20 times while I was watching and the female 23 times. 

 The shortest interval between feeding was one minute and the longest 

 was 45 minutes. During the whole day they were not seen to feed 

 the young anything but insects and worms as far as I could tell." 



Dr. Witmer Stone (1937), writing of conditions at Cape May, N. J., 

 says : "When the young first leave the nest they follow a parent, pre- 

 sumably the female, on the lawns of the town, running rapidly after 

 her and jostling one another in their greed to get the food she is finding 

 for them. This often continues until the birds are full-grown and 

 seem perfectly able to shift for themselves. By July 1 we may see 

 flocks of young numbering one himdred or more, all in their plain gray 

 dress, arising from the fields of cut hay where they find an abundance 

 of insect food ; other flocks all composed of young were seen on July 2 

 and 7 in different years about the hogpens which are to be found on the 

 edges of marsh and woodland, where the garbage from the town is 

 hauled." 



William Lott (1939), of London, Ontario, found a flicker feeding 

 a brood of three feathered young starlings; the nest was a typical 

 starling's nest ; he saw the flicker make several trips with food before 

 he caught her on the nest; he raised the question whether the starling 

 may have built its nest in the flicker's nesting hole and the latter 

 hatched the eggs. 



