is 8 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



It appears to be generally admitted by Ornithologists that the favourite food 

 of the Rose-coloured Starling consists in early summer of locusts, and later of 

 cherries : in confinement it eats cockroaches with avidity ; it should certainly 

 never be fed as that unfortunate example was, which many years ago was winged 

 at Chelmondiston, in Suffolk, and is said by Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear to 

 have been kept alive for three months on raw meat. All true Starlings will eat 

 meat, but it is not good for them, though less injurious than in the case of 

 members of the family Tiirdidcc. 



Lord Lilford observes that " The Rose-coloured Pastor thrives well in captivity, 

 but the constant chatter of even a single bird is almost overpowering in a room." 

 Doubtless this is the case, but no rank-feeding voracious birds are suitable pets 

 for a dwelling-room, for other reasons : in a bird-room they are more bearable ; 

 but, to see Starlings to perfection, they should be kept in a good-sized aviary. 



I have frequently seen Pastor roseus offered for sale, but was not sufficiently 

 struck with the bird to give the price required for it. Herr Wiener, however, 

 observes (Cassell's Cage-Birds, p. 424) : " I doubted the accounts I had read of 

 Starlings waging a war of extermination against locusts and grasshoppers ; till 

 seeing one day a Rose-coloured Pastor offered for sale, I remembered that I had 

 a hot-pit over-run with crickets, and resolved to try an experiment. The Pastor 

 was placed in an aviary, and I proceeded to catch crickets by placing balls of 

 crumpled brown paper into the warmest corners of the pit. Hundreds of lively 

 crickets could be shaken out of the papers in the morning, and I could thus 

 produce at pleasure something like a swarm of grasshoppers. A well-bred terrier 

 will face any number of his natural enemies rats ; but his zeal is nothing com- 

 pared to the Pastor's powers of methodical destruction of grasshoppers and crickets. 

 The crickets covered the ground on which the bird stood : they ran up his legs 

 and over his body, and coolly would he peck away, devouring one after the other, 

 until none were left. Where he put all the insects seemed incomprehensible ; but 

 the immense services which such insectivorous birds, with endless appetites, can 

 render to the agriculturist are palpable." 



In confinement this species should be fed like the Common Starling upon 

 the usual soft food, with the addition of such fruit as happens to be in season, 

 and any insects which can be obtained. Doubtless, like Sturnus vulgaris, it would 

 be all the better if allowed to have access to a saucer of seed : the fact that the 

 bird is a perfect scourge in the Indian fields of white millet being a sufficient 

 answer to those aviculturists who assert that seed is an unnatural food for insect- 

 ivorous birds. 



