5004 THE ZooLoGist—JULY, 1876. 
about eight feet high, close by the garden of Mr. W. Page T. Phillips, at 
Melton Grange. The female bird allowed me to pull down the tree-top, on 
a level with my face, and look at her on the nest, though the eggs were not 
at all incubated. I used to take these nests yearly near Bungay, but had 
not found one for twenty years, and then generally so late as June or July. 
The Rey. E. J. Moor, of Great Bealings, tells me that a pair of lesser red- 
polls built in an apple tree in his garden, close by the house, last year, but 
they did not find the nest till the 5th of September, when the young birds 
were “full floppers” (Suffolk for ready to fly). On Saturday, May 20th, 
T again found a nest of the above birds on a larch by the carriage drive at 
the Grange, and near the house; I felt five eggs and looked at one, which 
was dark coloured from advanced incubation.—F'rederick Spalding ; Wood- 
bridge. 
Starlings pecking with Open Beak.—Since Mr. Gurney again drew my 
attention to this subject, in the February number of the ‘ Zoologist’ (S. 8. 
4796), I have let no opportunity escape, by carefully concealing myself in 
the window-curtains, of watching the starlings feeding on the lawn. I have 
succeeded on four or five occasions in getting them within three yards of 
me, thus enabling me to see clearly the way the beak is used, and on no 
occasion have I seen it thrust into the grass closed, but invariably wide 
apart, and frequently with the upper mandible held perpendicularly, the 
lower then being considerably sloped back towards the breast; so that 
Mr. Newman’s statement, that “in their digging operations the upper 
mandible penetrates the ground, but not the lower,” is correct sometimes, 
so far as the bill is directed towards the ground, but I have yet to learn 
that the mandibles “ penetrate the ground” at all, and in a former note (see 
S. 8. 4836) I asked for information on this point. From all I have seen, 
I am persuaded that the beak is never thrust into the ground; in small 
thick tufts of very short grass the upper mandible is commonly used only, 
but where the grass is longer both mandibles are used, and invariably wide 
apart, often four or five times in quick succession, in or very near the same 
place; and it is used in the same way (open) amongst the small leaves of the 
daisy and other plants that are mostly lying flat on the ground. The object 
in using the mandibles apart appears to me to be to press the grass- or plant- 
leaves down, and thus disturb the insects that are hidden in the tufts of 
grass or beneath the leaves. I noticed that when they got a grub about a 
quarter of an inch long they always kept hold of the middle part, and by 
using their bill as if in the act of cleaning it on the grass, thus broke the 
grub into three parts; the part remaining in the bill was then swallowed, 
and then the other parts that had been wiped off were picked up. Be it 
understood that I have not said they do not pierce the ground, but that 
T have never seen them do so; and I do not see the use of the operation, 
as it appears to me the insects they want are not so much im the ground 
