A Case of Bird Eviction. 219 



neither in size nor strength is the starling a match for 

 Picus viridis, whose sharp pick-axe of a beak should be 

 armour sufficient for either attack or defence against a 

 far more powerful adversary. But I doubt the fact of 

 this alleged dispossession, notwithstanding that an in- 

 stance of starlings having appropriated the nesting-place 

 of green woodpeckers came under my own observation. 

 It was the same I have spoken of as in my orchard,* 

 where the woodpeckers brought forth the brood that 

 disappeared so mysteriously. This was in the summer of 

 1879 ; and revisiting it late in the following spring, to 

 ascertain whether these birds had come back there to 

 breed, I found the tree cavity occupied by a pair of 

 starlings, who had nested in it, and were in the act of 

 incubation. Left in undisturbed possession, they brought 

 out their young, successfully rearing them, and again 

 another brood in the succeeding summer 1881. 



I might have believed it a case of forcible dispossession 

 but for a fact which goes far towards contradicting this 

 view of it, if not altogether disproving it. In the long- 

 lying snow of January, 1880, a green woodpecker was 

 found dead in the orchard near where the pair had nested, 

 in all likelihood one of the old birds. If so, this would 

 account for their non-return to the nesting-place, without 

 the starlings having anything to do with it. Besides, it 

 might be that, after all, my haymaking lad robbed them 

 of their young, which would be sufficient reason for their 

 never more caring to make nest in that apple tree, " under 

 the mistletoe bough/' So the starlings are doubtless 

 innocent of having evicted them, and but took possession 

 of a home they found untenanted and ownerless, 



* Pages 43,44, 



