34 BULLETIN 868, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



reported that starlings had pulled nearly an acre of corn in one field, 

 and at Spring House, Pa., it was asserted that starlings had pulled 

 corn so badly on a 10-acre field that it had to be replanted. 



While laboratory examination shows that the starling is not an ex- 

 tensive feeder on ripening corn, field observation indicated that where 

 local conditions are favorable, as in the vicinity of roosts, the birds may 

 do damage. The aggregate loss to the corn crop which can be defi- 

 nitely attributed to the starling is not great. Many of the com- 

 plaints against the starling have been based on a misidentification of 

 the species — red-winged blackbirds and grackles being more frequently 

 responsible. The aggregate loss to sprouting corn is trivial. The 

 fact that starlings are easily frightened by gunfire and will shun an 

 area after a day or two of shooting suggests effective preventive 

 measures, which have not proved successful in the case of the other 

 two species mentioned. 



SMALL GRAIN. 



The farmer has little need to fear the starling as a menace to small 

 grains. Twenty of the 2,301 adult birds examined had fed on small 

 grain, and of these 13 had eaten wheat, 6 oats, and 1 millet. In 

 bulk this formed 0.39 per cent of the food, and fully half of this was 

 eaten at a time of year when it manifestly must have been waste. 

 The few complaints on this score were either so trivial in nature or so 

 widely separated that the aggregate injury is not important. The 

 complaints involved the picking up of newly sown oats, the "pull- 

 ing" of sprouting oats, and feeding on ripened wheat and millet. 

 At Sound Beach, Long Island, a flock of about 500 starlings was 

 noted feeding in a millet patch, the owner of which claimed that 

 the birds had eaten all the seed from a similar patch in the previous 

 year and that it appeared as if they would repeat the performance. 



GARDEN TRUCK. 



From the impossibility of satisfactorily identifying such food items 

 as chewed-up bits of lettuce and spinach leaves, tender pods of peas, 

 pulp of tomatoes, etc., it is apparent that stomach examination does 

 not satisfactorily determine the relation of the starling to garden" 

 truck. In no case were such items positively identified in stomachs, 

 though reliable field observers have witnessed attacks on these and 

 other products of the garden at odd times. The depredations are 

 confined mainly to small city gardens, where the succulent green 

 foods are readily accessible to an unusually large number of star- 

 lings. In intensively cultivated truck-crop areas, as in the Brook- 

 dale section, north of Bloomfield, N. J., similar conditions sometimes 

 prevail. 



