The Starling. 



179 



credible that practical persons like the German fruit- 

 growers would fix up boxes for the purpose of attracting 

 starlings to build therein if the birds did not far more 

 than compensate for the little fruit they might eat by 

 their wholesale destruction of insects of all kinds. Cherry- 

 growers in Kent complain that cherries are taken by 

 starlings ; but so many other birds, acknowledged fruit 

 lovers, are attracted by the luscious fruit, that starlings may 

 be unjustly accused, or condemned, as being found in the 

 company of notorious offenders. It is also alleged that 



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they take other kinds of fruit, and injure pears and apples by 

 pecking them. In the winter, when their natural food is 

 difficult to find, they eat " hips and haws,'' and Seebohm says 

 that they take elderberries in the autumn. On the whole, 

 however, the balance of benefit they do is very greatly in 

 their favour, and they should be looked upon as among the 

 best friends of agriculturists. 



The starling is so well and widely known throughout Great 

 Britain and Ireland as hardly to need description. It is 

 nearly 8J inches in length. The beak of the adult male is 

 yellow ; the head, neck, and back, and all of the under part 



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