II 



DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE? 



From my boyhood, when I first began to ob- 

 serve birds, I started with the imbibed notion that 

 those which paired for life were the rare excep- 

 tions — the dove that rhymed with love, the eagle, 

 and perhaps half a dozen more. Who, for in- 

 stance, would imagme that the sexes could be 

 faithful in parasitical species like the cuckoo of 

 Europe and the cow-birds of America? Yet even 

 as a boy I made the discovery that an Argentine 

 cow-bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other 

 species, does actually pair for life; and so effec- 

 tually mated is it, that on no day and no season 

 of the year will you see a male without his female : 

 if h^ flies she flies with him and feeds and drinks 

 with him, and when he perches she perches at 

 his side, and he never utters a sound but a re- 

 sponsive sound immediately falls from her devoted 

 beak. 



275 



