RED-WINGED STARLING. 157 



pied throughout the day in pulling up and devouring the 

 plants, returning to the work of spoliation as often as driven 

 away. Wheat, maize, and corn of every species is preyed on, 

 rice also, and all manner of seeds and berries, and likewise 

 insects and caterpillars, but these latter only, or chiefly, when 

 in lack of the former, though as they search for them at 

 such times with unremitting assiduity in every situation and 

 place, the numbers they destroy must be incalculable. When 

 the corn is reaped, they assume the right of gleaning in the 

 fields, and not content with this privilege, they afterwards 

 follow the crop to the farm-yard, and there too pilfer all 

 that they can from the harvest-home. Any indirect benefit 

 therefore that they may have been of is lost sight of in 

 the presence of the direct injury, and tens of thousands of 

 the marauding multitudes are slaughtered, though still no 

 apparent diminution is made. At night the reed-beds are 

 set fire to, and as the cloud of birds rises from it, a regiment 

 of shooters discharge volley after volley, and the field is 

 strewn with the slain. In like manner the Indians, who 

 usually plant their corn in one common field, employ all the 

 boys of the village throughout the day in tending their 

 growing crop, and, each armed with a bow and arrows, these 

 incipient Lockesleys contrive with great expertness to destrov 

 large numbers. The Hawks too of various kinds dash into 

 their close ranks, and though the flock instantly opens on 

 all sides, on the principle of 'sauve qui peut,' some are 

 almost sure to become victims. 



Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucien Buonaparte, in their 

 'American Ornithology,' give the following calculation of the 

 good effected by these birds in return for whatever grain 

 they may consume: 'Their general food at this season, as 

 well as during the early part of summer, consists of cater- 

 pillars and various other larvae, the silent but deadly enemies 

 of all vegetation, and whose secret and insidious attacks are 

 more to be dreaded by the husbandman than the combined 

 forces of the whole feathered tribe together. For those 

 vermin the Starlings search with great diligence, in the 

 ground, at the roots of plants, in orchards and meadows, 

 as well as among buds, leaves, and blossoms; and from 

 their known voracity, the multitudes of those insects which 

 they destroy must be immense. Let me illustrate this by a 

 short computation: if we suppose each bird, on an average, 

 ,to devour fifty of these Iarva3 in a day, (a very moderate 

 allowance,) a single pair, in four months, the usual time such 



