STARLINGS BREEDING 61 



How they die thrushes and blackbirds at this perilous 

 period in their lives ! I sometimes see what looks like 

 a rudely-painted figure of a bird on the hard road : it is 

 a young blackbird that had not the sense to get out of 

 the way of a passing team, and was crushed flat by a 

 hoof or wheel. It is but one in a thousand that perishes 

 in that way. One has to remember that these two 

 species of thrush throstle and blackbird are in 

 extraordinary abundance, that next to starlings and 

 chaffinches they abound over all species; that they 

 are exceedingly prolific, beginning to lay in this 

 southern county in February, and rearing at least three 

 broods in the season; and that when winter comes 

 round again the thrush and blackbird population will 

 be just about what it was before. 



Fruit-eating birds do not much vex the farmer in 

 this almost fruitless country. Thrushes and finches 

 and sparrows are nothing to him : the starling, if he 

 pays any attention to the birds, he looks on as a good 

 friend. 



At the farm there are two very old yew trees growing 

 in the back-yard, and one of these, in an advanced state 

 of decay, is full of holes and cavities in its larger 

 branches. Here about half-a-dozen pairs of starlings 

 nest every year, and by the middle of June there are 

 several broods of fully-fledged young. At this time it 

 was amusing to watch the parent birds at their task, 

 coming and going all day long, flying out and away 

 straight as arrows to this side and that, every bird to 



