THE STARLING, 
fields, as if practising for future and more important evolutions. 
* * * At last, however, a day comes when all is hushed. 
No hungry guests are feasting on the lawn, no clamorous 
throats are calling aloud for food, no twitterings are heard from 
bough or battlement, not even a straggler is to be seen on the 
pinnacle of the weathercock. The joyous assemblage is broken 
up. The starlings are gone; and till the next season, with 
scarcely an exception, we shall see them no more.” 
“ When I was at a friend’s house in Yorkshire,” writes a 
gentleman well known to the scientific world, “ last autumn, 
there were such immense numbers of these birds who sought 
sustenance by day on the neighbouring marshes, and at night 
came to roost on his trees, that at length there was not room 
for their entire accommodation ; the consequence of which was, 
that it became a matter of necessity that a separation of their 
numbers should take place, — a part to new quarters, and the 
remainder to retain possession of their old haunts. If I might 
judge from the conflicting arguments which their confused 
chattering seemed to indicate, the contemplated arrangement 
was not at all relished by those who were doomed to separate 
from their companions. A separation, however, did take place, 
but the exile would not leave the field undisputed. Birds, like 
aides-de-camp of an army, flew from one side to the other, un- 
ceasing voices gave note of dreadful preparations, and at last 
both sides took flight at the same moment. The whirring 
sound of their wings was perfectly deafening. When they had 
attained a great height in the air, the two forces clashed toge- 
ther with the greatest impetuosity. Immediately the sky was 
obscured with an appearance like the falling of snow descending 
gradually to the earth, and accompanied with a vast quantity 
of bodies of the starlings which had been speared through by 
hostile beaks. It was then growing rather dark, I could merely 
see the contending flock far above me, so I returned home to 
my friend, to whom I described the curious scene I had wit- 
nessed. In the morning he accompanied me to the field of 
battle, where we picked up 1,087 of these birds, the majority 
of them dead, but some of them merely wounded, and a vast 
quantity of broken feathers.” 
The starling’s nest is a very simple affair, being loosely 
constructed of leaves, hay, and feathers. The eggs, generally 
seven in number, are grey-green. The time to go nesting for 
starlings is about the second week in April. They build in the 
hollows and holes of trees generally, but sometimes beneath 
56 
