62 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



its own favourite hunting-g round. Some had their 

 grounds in the meadow, just before the house where 

 the cows and geese were, and it was easy to watch their 

 movements. Out of the yew the bird would shoot, and 

 in ten or twelve seconds would be down walking about 

 in that busy, plodding, rook-like way the starling has 

 when looking for something; and presently, darting 

 his beak into the turf, he would drag out something 

 large, and back he wquld fly to his young with a big, 

 conspicuous, white object in his beak. These white 

 objects which he was busily gathering every day, from 

 dawn to dark, were full-grown grubs of the cockchafer. 

 When watching these birds at their work it struck me 

 that the enormous increase of starlings all over the 

 country in recent years may account for the fact that 

 great cockchafer years do not now occur. In former 

 years these beetles were sometimes in such numbers 

 that they swarmed in the air in places, and stripped 

 the oaks of their leaves in midsummer. It is now more 

 than ten years since I saw cockchafers in considerable 

 numbers, and for a long time past I have not heard 

 of their appearance in swarms anywhere. 



The starling is in some ways a bad bird, a cherry 

 thief, and a robber of other birds' nesting-places ; yaffle 

 and nuthatch must hate him, but if his ministrations 

 have caused an increase of even one per cent, in the 

 hay crop, and the milk and butter supply, he is, from 

 our point of view, not wholly bad. 



In late June the unkept hedges are in the fulness of 



