STARLING 
141 
with the deep murmur of their united cries, before 
they finally take wing simultaneously, with an even 
louder surge of sound, to cover the last stage to 
their roosting-place. The precision with which 
such great bodies of Starlings wheel and turn in 
the air at the same moment is very wonderful to 
see. So also in a lesser way is the peculiar head- 
long, twisting plunge with which individual birds 
will finally drop into a shrubbery of laurels, or 
some other such dense cover, which is resorted to 
by the score or more of birds which may be at- 
tached to some particular house and garden. The 
Starling generally begins to build early in April, 
and chooses almost any hole which has an entrance 
of suitable size, either in buildings, trees, or rocks. 
It is fond of appropriating the holes bored by 
the Green Woodpecker. It sometimes extends its 
habit of keeping close company with Rooks and 
Jackdaws in the fields even to its nesting arrange- 
ments ; the nest is occasionally built in a hole in 
the lower part of a Rook's nest, and Starlings' eggs 
may even be found among those of the Jackdaw, 
though I know of no instance of young Starlings 
being successfully reared up in such a cuckoo-like 
situation. The nest is loosely but warmly built of 
straw, thin bark, wood-shavings, dead leaves, and 
a few other such materials, sometimes with a few 
feathers in the lining. Four to six eggs are laid, 
