THE MOVEMENTS OF STABLINGS. 135 



with a few feathers or bits of wool. The eggs are of a lovely pale 

 blue, sometimes white, and vary greatly in size and proportions. 

 As soon as the young are hatched the parents display intense 

 activity in searching for food to satisfy their enormous appetites. 

 There are generally five or six nests round my house, and I often 

 watch the Starlings from my bedroom window while dressing in 

 the morning. They regularly search every inch of the lawn for 

 worms, insects, and grubs, and never failed to do this during the 

 past dry summer, although, as there were hardly any worm-casts 

 to be seen, the worms had evidently left the surface-soil and 

 retired to the moister earth below ; so that the search must have 

 been rather a " forlorn hope." As soon as the Starlings have 

 exhausted the lawn they go farther afield, and they do an immense 

 amount of good by destroying noxious grubs and insects. In 

 reply to a letter of mine on the subject, the Rev. J. B. Meredith 

 writes : — " I agree with you that Starlings are most useful birds. 

 I do not think they affect the earthworm which makes the worm- 

 casts so much as the wireworm ; hence their diligent search of 

 your lawn even in the drought. You have evidently never had 

 your cherry trees cleared by them in dozens and in scores as I 

 have every year; and I have also caught them in the act of 

 stealing raspberries, currants, damsons, and ripe pears — watched 

 them gorging at them — though they do not systematically go for 

 these as they do for cherries." 



In regard to this matter, the only cherry tree in my garden is 

 a " Morello," and the fruit is too sour for most birds. I have 

 not seen the Starlings attack the other fruits mentioned, but 

 have seen Blackbirds doing so frequently. 



Mr. G. H. Paddock relates that his father used to shoot the 

 Starlings round the house at Caynton, Newport ; he urged him 

 not to do so on the ground that they were such useful birds in 

 destroying worms, &c, and at last persuaded him to give them a 

 year's trial. As he anticipated, " the difference in the turf was 

 most marked ; it was no longer unsightly from worm-expellings, 

 the Starlings hunting it over first thing every morning." Since 

 then they have been protected; an empty oyster-barrel which 

 Mr. Paddock put up for them in a tree was adopted for a nesting- 

 place by a pair of Starlings the very next morning. Under date 

 Pec. 9th, 1899, Mr. Paddock adds ; — ''During this summer the 



