52 The Bird 
deposited their eggs. For hundreds of yards every thorny 
bush is packed full of cup-shaped nests, even the spaces 
between the nests being often filled up with sticks or 
rubbish, through which narrow passages are left for the 
ingress and egress of the birds. Many starlings that can 
find no room in the bushes build on the ground, or under 
Fig. 118.—Brown Pelicans diving for fish. (Sanborn, photographer. Courtesy 
N. Y. Zoological Society.) 
stones, or in holes, and these unfortunates, together with 
their eggs or young, ultimately become the victims of 
the smaller carnivorous mammals or of snakes. It fre- 
quently happens also that either the young locusts are 
hatched in insufficient numbers or that they migrate before 
the young starlings are fledged. In either case large 
numbers of birds perish of hunger, the majority of the 
