156 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



selection, with the choice of such coverts, I do not 

 know, nor, do I suppose, does anybody. It is matter 

 of conjecture, but what I have mentioned in regard 

 to the many small trees, scattered through the 

 plantation, seems to me curious. How comfortably, 

 one would think, could the birds roost in these, but, 

 again, how easily could a cat run up them. Of 

 course a habit of this kind, gained in relation to such 

 possibilities as these, would have been gained ages 

 ago, when there might have been great differences 

 both in the numbers and species of such animals as 

 would have constituted a nightly danger. Certain 

 it is that starlings, during the daytime, much affect 

 all ordinarily-growing trees. They roost, also, in 

 reed-beds, where they would be still safer from the 

 kind of attack supposed. 



Even whilst this book is going through the press, 

 have come the usual shoutings of the Philistines 

 their cries for blood and fierce instigations to 

 slaughter. The starlings, they tell us, do harm, 

 but what they really mean is this, that, seeing them 

 in abundance, their fingers itch to destroy. It is 

 ever so. These men, having no souls in their 

 bodies, have nothing whatever to set against the 

 smallest modicum of injury that a bird or beast 

 (unless it be a fox or a pheasant) may do against 

 any of those sticks, in fact, that are so easily found 

 to beat dogs with. In one dingle or copse of their 

 estate a pheasant or two is disturbed. Then down 

 with the starlings who do it, for what good are the 

 starlings to them ? They do not care about grand 

 sights or picturesque effects. They would sooner 

 shoot a pheasant nicely, to see it shut its eyes 



