NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 135 
traps will be entirely abolished, may we not look forward to the time when the 
law permits their employment for the capture of rats and mice only ; and cannot 
something be done by appealing to the owners of land, and especially to our 
country squires ? Much suffering would be stopped by ladies taking up a cam- 
paign against the abuse of these traps. 
Scuthacte, Swafiham, EdmI'ND Thos. Daubeny. 
May, 1905. 
257. Helping Nest-Builders. — A pair of house-martins, having taken 
a fancy to the angle of one of my windows, found it impossible to start their nest 
as the cement is too smooth for them to gain a foothold, and fixing the first 
pellets of mud in position is the most difficult engineering feat they have to 
perform. Noticing their fruitless attempts, I plastered a little mud on the place. 
This timely help was appreciated at once, and in ten minutes they began to work 
the mud into shape. As I sit at the open window reading the newspaper, with 
which I can reach the nest, they carry on the work. l 3 read of the ))arasitic 
sparrow, which threatens the existence of their race by seizing on their nests, 
causes these birds to seek the protection and proximity of man. 
Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
258. Birds in Northamptonshire. It may be of interest to mention 
that a pair of Golden Orioles safely hatched off five young ones in the neighbour- 
hood of Peterborough last year. 1 saw a common buzzard near Market Harborough 
this spring, and my fellow secretary cf our other (Peterborough) Ornithological 
Society in Northants saw a pair not long ago in that neighbourhood. We both 
saw some Ferruginous Ducks in the early spring, and he reports a Goshawk at 
Peterborough. W. A. Shaw, 
Haselbeech Rectory, Northants Nat. Hist. Soc. 
Northampton. 
259. The Starling and Damage to Crops, &c.— For many years 
I have had the shooting tights over 400 acres of farmland : my principal object, 
however, was to study the various species of birds nesting on it, and to photo- 
graph their eggs and young, giving them as much protection as lay in my power. 
Every year starlings increased in numbers, and on December 20, 1898, the farmer 
informed me he thought these birds were destroying his sprouting wheat. On 
shooting and dissecting a few, we found their stomachs contained wheat — not a few 
grains which might be swallowed accidentally along with animal matter, but quite 
a number of grains. I wrote to The Field asking if anyone else had noticed this 
habit in the starling, and got replies from Shrewsbury, Ilempstead, &c., all stating 
that starlings had done much damage. Again, in January of this year, a corre- 
spondence started in the same paper on this subject, and the majority of writers 
agreed that starlings damaged sprouting wheat. I replied {yiide Field, 
February 25), pointing out that starlings in this district, shot from November 
to January on fields of wheat, usually contain a quantity of grain, but that in 
my possession were several test-tubes full of noxious insects taken from their 
stomachs when not shot at the time of year or in the situation described above. 
In reference to Mr. Edmund Thos. Daubeny’s note (see Nature Notes for 
June), the farmer from whom I rent my shooting got leaflets, sent to me from the 
Board of Agriculture, and the one on the starling included ; but his faith in 
Government papers has been considerably shaken in consequence of his having 
practical proof that the starling does considerable damage to his crops at certain 
seasons of the year. Of course it is well known that starlings eat fruit. Some- 
times we Selbornians do harm by painting bird-character in too rosy terms, and 
it is better with farmers (shrewd observers as a rule) to point out the good and 
destruction to crops done by different species, impartially weighing the evidence, 
which, in a very large majority of cases, shows up birds to be great benefactors 
to the agriculturalist. 
Southsea, Hants, J. E. H. Kelso, M.B.O.U. 
June 7, 1905. 
260. Pied Flycatchers. — On May 20 I fixed up in an oak-tree near my 
bedroom window a nesting-box, which has usually been occupied by a pair of 
