benefits it confers on the farmer far exceed the harm that it 

 does by attacks on fruit or crops; nevertheless, there are many 

 instances on record where the starling has become a pest to 

 the farmer. The habit of collecting in enormous flocks is 

 the great element of danger. When a great number of any 

 species having grain-eating or fruit-eating propensities is col- 

 lected in one locality they are capable of doing great harm in 

 a very short time. Such flights, however, are often productive 

 of good. 



The forest authorities in Bavaria, during an invasion of the 

 spruce moth or "nun" in 1889-91, noted great flights of star- 

 lings, which were credibly estimated to contain as many as ten 

 thousand in a flock, all busy feeding on the caterpillars and 

 pupae of this moth. The attraction of starlings to such centers 

 was so great that market gardeners seriously felt their absence 

 in distant parts of the region.^ 



The injury that starlings are capable of doing in Europe 

 may be judged from the following accounts. Mr. A. Butler 

 Duncan of New York writes that he has known the starling to 

 become a "perfect pest" in England. What the starling does 

 to fruit in Great Britain is told in an extract from the "Agri- 

 cultural Students' Gazette," quoted by Mr. S. H. Goodwin in 

 "Bird-Lore," May-June, 1908, page 130. 



The starling is a splendid bird on grass land, foraging for leather' 

 jackets (larvae of craneflies), wire worms, etc.; rids the sheep of a few 

 of their ticks; but in a fruit district it comes in droves into the straw- 

 berries and attacks the cherries wholesale (Hereford); peas, apples, 

 plums, as well as cherries (Kent), also raspberries. Very valuable in- 

 sect destroyers, but getting too numerous (Notts). In my fruit field 

 (between Harden and Colchester) I do not suffer very much from black- 

 birds and thrushes, nor do I grudge them their toll in return for their 

 song. Only one bird is dangerous to my crops, — that is the starling. 

 He threatened the utter destruction of our strawberry, raspberry, cherry, 

 gooseberry and currant, and some other crops. These birds arc said to 

 come to us from the marshes as soon as the young are hatched. And 

 they come in milUons; in flocks that darken the sky. Their flight is like 

 the roar of tlie sea, or like the trains going over the arches. Their number 

 increased rapidly each year. I can look back to the time when there 

 were few, and have watched their increase for forty j^ears, till now it 



' Fiirst, Hermann: "Protection of Woodlands." English edition, translated by John Nisbet, 

 1893, p. 126. 



