STARLING 33 



of Gaunt, and still flourishing so long since "time-honoured 

 Lancaster " himself has mouldered into dust, that at its base 

 was a colony of rabbits, in the trunk a nest of cats, and 

 immediately above the latter, one of Starlings. One has 

 been built for two or three years in succession, in the 

 garden of Nunburnholme Rectory, in the depth of a hole 

 in a large old acacia tree. 



The nest is large, and fabricated of straw, roots, por- 

 tions of plants, and dry grass, or hay, with a rude lining 

 of feathers and hair. The birds will sometimes resort most 

 pertinaciously to the same building-place. In one instance 

 the eggs are said to have been found in the nest of 

 a Magpie. One pair having with much difficulty forced 

 their way into a ball used by being raised or let down to 

 act as a signal on a railway, there built their nest, and 

 though the ball was elevated and lowered to within a few 

 feet of the ground fourteen times a day, this did not inter- 

 fere with their proceedings, and in due time four eggs were 

 laid with every prospect of being duly hatched. This was 

 near Kilwinning, on the Ardrossan line, in 1853, and the 

 circumstance was recorded in the Dumfries Courier. The 

 hen sits very close, is fed by her mate, and has been 

 known to allow herself to be taken by the hand from the 

 nest. 



The eggs, four to seven in number, are of a delicate 

 pale blue or blue green colour: some have a few black 

 dots. Mr. R. J. Davidson, of Muirhouse, informs me of 

 a nest of five white eggs, which he found in a hollow tree 

 at Dedham, in Essex, in 1862. Mr. G. Warren, of Wit- 

 nesham Vicarage, near Abingdon, found a nest with the 

 eggs all but pure white, and forwarded me two of them as 



specimens. 



VOL. n. E 



