i34 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



The nest is placed in any hole in a tree, a bank, a cutting, a sand- or chalk- 

 pit, a rock, wall, ruin, chimney, in thatches, or roofing of summer-houses, cottages, 

 and "out-houses, in stove- or gutter-pipes. It is roughly constructed of grass or 

 straw, sometimes with a lining of wool and a few feathers, and usually contains 

 from four to six eggs, though sometimes only three, smooth and somewhat glossy 

 and beautifully oval ; always unspotted, but varying in tint from bluish- white to 

 turquoise-blue ; an intermediate shade between these extremes being the commonest 



type- 

 In my " Handbook of British Oology " I have described a curious nest which 



I took from the stove-pipe to a conservatory at the village of Upchurch, near 

 Newington, Kent, and which filled no less than twelve feet of 4-inch piping : we 

 took the latter to pieces and pushed the nest out in form of a long cylinder. 

 This nest was entirely constructed of fragments of straw or bast, with a few long 

 pieces at the sides, and had been collected since the arrival of mild weather and 

 the consequent disuse of the stove. It contained three partly incubated eggs, 

 which were about a foot from the top of the pipe. I do not believe that, if 

 hatched, the three young birds would have been able to sit comfortably in the 

 pipe, and it is doubtful whether they could have easily escaped from it. 



Nidification lasts from April to June ; in mild seasons the first nests being 

 commenced towards the end of March ; two broods are sometimes reared in a year, 

 and it is not very rare to find two hens in charge of one nest, in which case 

 seven, eight, or even more eggs will be found together : * this I have proved on 

 more than one occasion, but only in the case of nests built under thatching, where 

 I flushed both hens from the same hole, as I rested my ladder against the roof, 

 and putting in my hand felt the whole of the double clutch in the one depression : 

 so far as I could make out, only one male owned the nest and its two occupants. 



The food of the Starling consists during the breeding-season of worms, slugs, 

 leather-jackets (the larvae of crane-flies) and many other destructive grubs ; also of 

 spiders and various insects ; indeed these are always eaten when procurable, 

 but in autumn fruit and the softer berries are devoured, whilst in winter hips 

 and haws, and seeds of many kinds, as well as all kinds of household scraps are 

 greedily swallowed. 



In the autumn Starlings collect into immense flocks, consisting of hundreds 

 of thousands, if not millions of individuals ; as they pass overhead, wheeling in 

 an immense circle, the sound of their wings is like the rushing of water, and the 

 earth is darkened below as by a heavy passing cloud. I have seen two or three 

 of these vast assemblages following one another and wheeling incessantly over a 



* Cf. also Zoologist, 1895, p. 307 for supposed polyandry, and 1896, October. 



