AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 207 



92. STARLING. 



Sturnus vulgaris. 



As may well be supposed in a district so eminently 

 suited to its habits, this well-known bird is exceedingly 

 abundant with us, and we presume that there is hardly 

 a Northamptonshire man, woman, or child who is not 

 more or less acquainted with the " Starnel," as it is 

 commonly called by our country people. We do not 

 therefore propose to enter into any lengthy details as 

 to its habits, which have been fully and frequently 

 described by far abler pens than ours, but perhaps a 

 few observations from our experience in our own 

 neighbourhood may possess some interest for North- 

 amptonshire readers, for whom these notes are specially 

 designed. Some fifty years ago several small spinnies 

 of blackthorn, with a few fir-trees in each, were 

 planted in a large pasture-field adjoining the park at 

 Lilford, and two of these plantations, when the black- 

 thorns had attained a height of some eight or ten feet, 

 were selected as winter roosting-places by myriads of 

 Starlings, which deserted for that purpose several 

 older plantations in the neighbourhood. The numbers 

 of these birds crowding into these small coverts at 

 dusk from the end of September till March were 

 astonishing, and seemed to increase annually for some 

 eight or ten years, when the flocks suddenly abandoned 

 these haunts, and since that time, though a few 

 Starlings still come in to roost, and although the 

 species is certainly as abundant with us as ever, I do 

 not think that I am wrong in stating that the evening 

 flights at the spots above mentioned may now be 

 reckoned by tens instead of by thousands as formerly. 



