IS THE STARLING DOUBLE-BROODED? 37 1 



clamorous young in nearly all the nests. A further visit revealed the 

 fact that all the young had flown from the nest-holes, with the 

 exception of those, now again occupied, from which I had taken the 

 eggs. By the middle of June the breeding-place was quite deserted, 

 but the lanes and hedge-rows abounded with parties of Starlings 

 numbering from six to eight birds, without doubt a brood of young 

 and the parent birds. These parties have now united into small 

 flocks, which again, as winter approaches, will form the enormous 

 flocks that do such damage to the Norfolk reed-beds, breaking down 

 the crop by their weight whenever they alight. 



To my thinking, the Starling is very closely allied to the crows, 

 and it must be remembered that the young birds in this family also 

 are fed by their parents, long after they leave the nests, and that they 

 are very seldom double-brooded. A flock of Rooks, Jackdaws, and 

 Starlings intermixed, is a familiar sight. — F. B. Whitlock, Atten- 

 borough, August 2nd, 1889. 



II. 



There are three or four pair of birds which breed annually in 

 our house, and I believe that most of them rear two broods in the 

 year ; one or two pair certainly do. 



I cannot say that I have ever noticed this occurrence in other 

 nesting-places away from the house, but will make closer observations 

 next year. 



Their habit of adopting the holes bored by Woodpeckers, 

 alluded to by Mr. Mitchell, has often made me feel spiteful towards 

 them. They are very numerous around here. — Basil Carter, 

 Masham, Yorkshire. 



My reply to the question ' Are Starlings double-brooded ? ' must 

 be distinctly in the affirmative, and my opportunities of observation 

 have been manifold and convincing. In my early youth — say, sixty 

 years ago — the Starling was accounted a genuine rara avis, and 

 hardly known to nest in Cumberland. I well remember that the 

 first Starlings' eggs I ever had in my possession were taken from 

 a hollow tree that had been cut down on my grandfather's farm, 

 about seven miles to the southward of Carlisle. Gradually they 

 increased in numbers, until of late years they have constituted 

 a very considerable factor in the avifauna of the North-West of 

 England. In some of their better-known roosting -haunts, as at 

 W'hitefield House on Overwater, at Flimby Wood, in the grounds 

 at Gilgarron, etc., they may be reckoned by thousands, morning and 

 evening, especially during the late summer or early autumn months. 



Dec. 1880. 



