HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE STABLING. 145 



alone. He opened many, and found wheat in them all, and the 

 field was covered with holes where the Starlings had been peck- 

 ing down to get at the grain. The only other instance of the 

 kind he knew was about ten years before during a sharp frost in 

 autumn." 



3rd. Mr. Leno Cox, Pond Farm, Hemel Hempstead, stated 

 " he farmed between five and six hundred acres of land, and in his 

 experience the Starling had been occasionally one of severe loss. 

 Whenever he had wheat sown rather late the Starling had done a 

 vast amount of damage, but the wheat that had been sown in 

 good time they had never meddled with. The mischief, he con- 

 tended, is done just as the blade is showing itself. The Starling 

 then makes a hole down the side of the blade, and squeezes the 

 pulp out of the seed. A few years before one of his outlying fields 

 had been completely ruined by Starlings, and had to be ploughed 

 and sown again in spring." 



In 1905 correspondence again started in ' The Field ' re 

 damage done by Starlings. I should like to state here all my 

 observations were confined to Hayling Island, Hants. 



Before December, 1898, I found Starlings fed on molluscs, 

 worms, wireworms, leather-jackets, cockchafer-grubs, ticks, 

 beetles, spiders, and occasionally fruit, such as raspberries, figs, 

 cherries, sometimes pears. Since 1898, every year I find Star- 

 lings shot on wheat-fields — from the beginning of November to 

 about the middle of January, according to the season — con- 

 tain much wheat, but even during this time, when shot on 

 meadows or stubble, they contain insects and their larvae, also 

 molluscs. 



On Hayling a few Starlings begin to eat the wheat immedi- 

 ately it is sown ; on the second day they appear in greater 

 numbers, and continue at frequent intervals to devour the grain 

 till the blade is just sprouting above the ground, then they leave 

 off. Contrary to the experience of one of the correspondents in 

 1 The Field,' I find even when the wheat is sprouting they 

 swallow the whole grain, not the pulp alone. In frosty or very 

 wet weather they cease to attack the crop ; in the former case 

 because they cannot reach it, in the latter probably from two 

 reasons — 1st, their insect-food is found more easily ; 2nd, the 

 semi- liquid earth clogs their claws and impedes flight. 



