STARLINGS AS ARCHITECTS 133 



which extremely close observation has enabled me 

 to elicit. I have noticed that a woodpecker which 

 has abandoned its hole, always lays claim to magna- 

 nimity, as the motive for such abandonment, whereas 

 the starling as invariably attributes it to weakness. 

 I have not yet decided which is right. 



But the starling may be regarded in a nobler light 

 than that of a parasitical appropriator, or even a mere 

 finder of, dwellings. He is, and that to a very con- 

 siderable extent, a builder of them, too. I have some 

 reason to think that he is occasionally, so to speak, 

 his own woodpecker, for I have seen him bringing, 

 through an extremely rough and irregular aperture, 

 in a quite decayed tree, one little beakful of chips 

 after another, whilst his mate sat singing on the stump 

 of the same branch, just above him. The chips 

 thus brought were dropped on the ground, and had 

 all the appearance of having been picked and pulled 

 out of the mass of the tree. Possibly, therefore, 

 the aperture had been made in the same way. 



It is in gravel- or sand-pits, however, that the bird's 

 greatest architectural triumphs are achieved. Star- 

 lings often form colonies here, together with sand- 

 martins, and the holes, or, rather, caverns, which they 

 make are so large as to excite wonder. A rabbit — 

 nay, two — might sit in some of them ; two would 

 be a squeeze, indeed, but one would find it roomy 

 and comfortable. The stock-dove certainly does, 

 for she often builds in them, as she does in the 

 burrows of rabbits, and can no more be supposed to 

 make the one than the other. Besides, I have seen 

 the starlings at work in their vaults, and the latter 

 growing from day to day. But no, I am stating, or 



