1 30 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



it will be exterminated all through the starling. 

 It makes his blood boil. To console himself he 

 looks through his fine collection, which contains 

 not only woodpecker's eggs say a roomful but 

 woodpeckers themselves in the fluff. 1 It is some- 

 thing balm in Gilead yet had it not been for the 

 starling there might have been more. 



Personally, I do not share in the panic, and if 

 the green woodpecker should disappear from this 

 island as, indeed, it may the starling, I am con- 

 fident, will have had but little to do with it. The 

 result, as I believe, of the present friction between 

 the two birds, will be of a more interesting and 

 less painful character. For say that a woodpecker 

 be deprived of its first nest, or tunnel, it will as- 

 suredly excavate another one. Not, however, im- 

 mediately : it is likely, I think, that there would be 

 an interval of some days perhaps a week, or longer 

 and, by this time, a vast number of starlings would 

 have laid their eggs. Consequently, the dispossessed 

 woodpecker would have a far better chance of 

 laying and hatching out his, this second time, and a 

 better one still, were he forced to make a third 

 attempt. No doubt, a starling wishing to rear a 

 second brood would be glad to misappropriate 

 another domicile, but, as the woodpecker would be 

 now established, either with eggs or young, it would 

 probably I should think, myself, certainly be 

 unable to do so, but would have to suit itself else- 

 where. The woodpecker should, therefore, have 

 reared its first brood some time before the starling 

 had finished with its second, and so would have time 



1 The nakedness in this case rather ; but I use the term conven- 

 tionally. 



