BIRDS IN LONDON 283 



business of the year is already over for them, 

 and they have resumed their roving habits. The 

 pairs that nest at a distance of, say, between two 

 or three miles from any open space must during 

 the dog days, in exceptionally hot and dry weather, 

 find it impossible to gather food enough for their 

 broods. The parent bird may make as many as 

 fifty journeys a day to the open space, and will 

 thus travel two to three hundred miles, each 

 four or five miles' journey resulting in a meagre 

 beakful of grubs, dug with labour out of a sun- 

 baked earth at the roots of the trodden grass. 

 The young perish of starvation ; but later in the 

 season a fresh attempt is made, and if the weather 

 becomes favourable, a brood may be brought off 

 in late August. 



It may comfort admirers of the starling to 

 learn that it is possible to help him in his brave 

 efforts, during bad seasons, to rear a family in 

 the parkless districts of London. A neighbour 

 of mine who occupies the upper part of a large, 

 very high house, with dormer-windows opening 

 on to a flat portion of the roof, made the dis- 

 covery that some pairs of starlings breeding in 

 the neighbourhood would readily come to feed 



