232 STURNID^. 



have provided shelter for it, since unless a sufficiency of 

 food is forthcoming for the many additional mouths accom- 

 modation for additional bodies would avail little. Moreover, 

 as is the case throughout Scotland (to be more particularly 

 dwelt on presently), Starlings have become more and more 

 abundant in places whither they have not been invited. The 

 true cause of their increase is more likely to lie in a growing 

 abundance of food, but we must confess our ignorance as to 

 how that growing abundance has been produced. 



The Starling builds its nest in the holes of trees, cliffs or 

 banks, all of which must be regarded as its natural habitations 

 but will, though very rarely, make one after the fashion of 

 most other birds.* It readily avails itself of any convenient 

 situation which may be afforded it by man or other animals, 

 and has been often found the tenant of a rabbit-burrow 

 when opening on the face of a declivity, while its occupation 

 of man's edifices, from the towers of the proudest cathedral 

 to the wall of a lowly hut, composed of boulders and turf — 

 from the venerable ruins of an ancient castle to the preten- 

 tious villa of modern days, whose peeling stucco invites the 

 Starling to penetrate its fissures — is known to all. It will 

 dispute with a Woodpecker the hole which the latter has 

 laboriously chiselled in a tree, and will almost always gain 

 an easy victory, for on its carrying in some nest-furniture the 

 Woodpecker at once yields possession. The Starling too 



the bird's scarcity in the nortli of England in those days, the wish was apparently 

 never gratified. Where the species is at all numerous nothing is easier than to 

 attract it, by setting uj) a nest-box for its accommodation. 



* The Editor well remembers a Starling's nest (an old Sparrow's very likely 

 forming its foundation) built of straw in a large yew, and open to the sky. This 

 was at Elveden in 1842 or 1843, and, though at the time perfectly aware of its 

 being a deviation from the bird's usual habit, he did not imagine that such an 

 instance had not been recorded as known before, or that some live-and-thirty 

 years after he should be unable to cite more than a few similar cases. Mr. G. 

 B. Clarke mentions (Nat. 1851, p. 214) some platform-nests, composed of twigs 

 and bents in fir-branches at Woburn, and Mr. J. P. Thomasson twenty years later 

 (Zool. s.s. p. 2682) a nest built against the trunk of a small fir near Bolton-le- 

 Moors. As an equally exceptional site for a nest may be mentioned that described 

 by Mr. J. Sclater (Zool. s.s. p. 3647), where a small hole in the level surface of 

 the ground was used and a brood hatched. Mr. J. W. Barlow (Zool. p. 1023) 

 was told of a Starling which laid in the same nest with a Pie. 



