STICKS TO BEAT STARLINGS i6i 



takes it for granted that they are there, all for 

 plunder, and that all are eating — but this is a 

 wrong idea. The greater number — full of another 

 kind of excitement — touch nothing, and dead 

 barkless trees may be seen as crowded as those 

 which are loaded with fruit. Some fruit, as I say, 

 they do destroy, and this, in actual quantity, may 

 amount to a good deal. But let anybody see the 

 orchards in the west of England — where starlings 

 are most abundant — during the gathering-time, and 

 he may judge as to the proportion of harm that the 

 birds do. It is, in fact, infinitesimal, not worth the 

 thinking of, a negligeable quantity. Yet in the same 

 year that mountains of fruit are thrown away, or left 

 ungathered, when it may rot rather than that the 

 poor — or indeed anybody — should buy it cheap, you 

 will hear men talk of the starlings. 



Why, then, do the starlings " infest " .? Why 

 should they be persecuted ? Because they sleep 

 together, in the space of, perhaps, a quarter of an 

 acre here and there — one sole dormitory in a large 

 tract of country ^ Is that their crime ? For myself 

 I see not where the harm of this can lie, but sup- 

 posing that a thimbleful does lie somewhere, that 

 a pheasant or two — for whose accommodation the 

 country groans — is displaced, is not the pleasure 

 of having the birds, and their grub-collecting all 

 day long, sufficient to outweigh it ? Is there nothing 

 to love and admire in these handsome, lively, friendly, 

 vivacious birds ^ They do much good, little harm, 

 and none of that little to song-birds. Indeed they 

 are song-birds too, or very nearly. How pleasant 

 are their cheery, sing-talking voices ! How greatly 



