134 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



implying, a little too much. Properly, satisfactorily 

 at work I have not seen them, though I have tried 

 to ; I have been unfortunate in this respect. But 

 there were the holes, and there were the starlings 

 always in and about them, and, sometimes, hanging 

 on the face of the sand-pit, like the sand-martins 

 themselves. That the latter had had anything to 

 do with these great, rounded caves, or that the 

 starlings had merely seized on the last year's martin- 

 holes, and enlarged them, I do not believe. That 

 may be so in some cases, but here, as it seems to me, 

 it would have been impossible. Sand-martins, as is 

 well known, drive their little narrow tunnels, for an 

 immense way, into the cliff — nine feet sometimes, it 

 is said, but this seems rather startling. Large and 

 roomy and cavernous as are the chambers of the 

 starlings, yet they are not quite so penetrating, so 

 bowelly, as this. Therefore — and this would especi- 

 ally apply in the earlier stages of their construction — 

 the original martin-holes ought always to be found 

 piercing their backward wall, if the starlings had 

 merely widened the shaft for themselves. This, 

 however, has not been the case in the excavations 

 which I have seen, even when they were mere 

 shallow alcoves in the wall of the cliff — but just 

 commenced, in fact. Moreover, some of these 

 starling-burrows were several feet apart, the cliff 

 between them being unexcavated. Sand - martins, 

 however, drive their tunnels close together, and in 

 a long irregular line, or series of lines, so that if, 

 in these instances, starlings had seized upon them, 

 there ought to have been many small holes in the 

 interstices between the large ones. Lastly, if a 



