ii8 INCREASE AND DISPERSAL OF BIRDS 



these latter got their first visitors we are left to 

 guess. Very possibly the original colonists 

 followed the same route as the Norsemen, for 

 the starling is an old-established race in Scan- 

 dinavia. A widely distributed species, it is 

 found all over Europe and Northern Africa, 

 and extends through Russia across the Urals 

 to Eastern Siberia and throughout India ; it 

 may therefore well be that the ancient Northern 

 colonies were originally peopled from the North 

 and East where the centres had become con- 

 gested by advancing waves from the Further 

 East. 



Towards autumn the starlings a very gre- 

 garious folk collect in huge flocks and fly 

 nightly to their favourite roosting- places, where 

 they congregate in such vast numbers as to 

 become a positive nuisance, if not a danger, 

 the ground beneath being polluted to an extent 

 hardly credible if not experienced. Nor is it 

 easy to drive them from such favoured spots ; 

 shooting has little effect on such uncountable 

 numbers, and it is said that the only successful 

 means of getting rid of them, short of cutting 

 down the trees and shrubs in which they roost, 

 is to keep up a continuous series of damp 

 ' smudge ' fires to windward of the place until 

 they are fairly smoked out. 



