ijo BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



it will be exterminated — all through the starling. 

 It makes his blood boil. To console himself he 

 looks through his fine collection, which contains 

 not only woodpecker's eggs — say a roomful — but 

 woodpeckers themselves — in the fluff.^ It is some- 

 thing — balm in Gilead — yet had it not been for the 

 starling there might have been more. 



Personally, I do not share in the panic, and if 

 the green woodpecker should disappear from this 

 island — as, indeed, it may — the starling, I am con- 

 fident, will have had but little to do with it. The 

 result, as I believe, of the present friction between 

 the two birds, will be of a more interesting and 

 less painful character. For say that a woodpecker 

 be deprived of its first nest, or tunnel, it will as- 

 suredly excavate another one. Not, however, im- 

 mediately : it is likely, I think, that there would be 

 an interval of some days — perhaps a week, or longer 

 — and, by this time, a vast number of starlings would 

 have laid their eggs. Consequently, the dispossessed 

 woodpecker would have a far better chance of 

 laying and hatching out his, this second time, and a 

 better one still, were he forced to make a third 

 attempt. No doubt, a starling wishing to rear a 

 second brood would be glad to misappropriate 

 another domicile, but, as the woodpecker would be 

 now established, either with eggs or young, it would 

 probably — I should think, myself, certainly — be 

 unable to do so, but would have to suit itself else- 

 where. The woodpecker should, therefore, have 

 reared its first brood some time before the starling 

 had finished with its second, and so would have time 



^ The nakedness in this case rather ; but I use the term conven- 

 tionally. 



