144 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE STARLING (STURNUS 



VULGARIS). 



By J. E. H. Kelso, M.D., M.B.O.U. 



Prior to Dec. 20th, 1898, I always considered the Starling 

 not only harmless but useful to agriculture. However, on that 

 date a farmer told me he had a suspicion they were eating his 

 wheat. I shot a few, and found he was correct. On dissection 

 I discovered not a grain or two, which might have accidentally 

 been picked up with animal matter, but each Starling had a 

 number of grains inside. A year or two before this I found 

 Starlings would eat grain which had been scattered about to feed 

 Pheasants, also when shed on stubble, but was not aware they 

 would dig up and eat newly sown and sprouting wheat. In 

 December, 1899, I began to thoroughly investigate the matter, 

 and shot Starlings on wheat-fields, finding they always contained 

 grain. This wheat-eating (at least to any extent) appeared to 

 me a newly acquired habit, so I wrote an account of it to ' The 

 Field,' and received several replies, apparently from practical 

 farmers. I quote three : — 



1st. " On only one occasion I have found hard wheat in a 

 Starling, and that was in a very hard winter when the threshing 

 machine stood in the rickyard (it had been threshing wheat), 

 and there came a deep snow. After a day or two I swept a path 

 to shoot Sparrows, and shot, amongst others, a Starling ; it had 

 several grains of wheat inside, but birds would be hard pressed 

 for food, so it was not much to go by." — Whipcord. 



2nd. Ernest D. Eider, Edgebolton, Shrewsbury, stated "that 

 Starlings did a great amount of damage to the wheat on his farm, 

 and that of his neighbours, the previous autumn by stocking up 

 and eating the wheat just as the shoots were coming through 

 the ground. Although he had always protected the Starling for 

 the amount of good it did, on this occasion he was compelled to 

 shoot at them for two days before they would leave the field 



