Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(140) THE BIRD WORLD. 
Summer Singing of the Birds. 
It is interesting to notice how birds 
help to mark out the periods of sum¬ 
mer, to punctuate them by song and by 
silence. Often, great heat coming early 
in July, Thrushes, Blackbirds, Larks, 
and others suddenly cease singing, and 
we set it to heat. But a silence, 
sometimes almost a dead silence, fell 
on these singing birds in the first week 
of this July; and heat could have had 
nothing to do with it. It is on burning 
afternoons in July, too, that the Turtle 
Doves are usually so insistent; heat, 
which, we fancy, silences the Thrush, 
the Blackbird, and the Lark, seeks to 
encourage the Turtle Dove, so that the 
flickering air at mid-day and in the 
drowsy afternoons seems to vibrate with 
their note. Why should heat stay the 
Thrush if the Turtle Doves vibrate 
then? The truth seems to be that it 
is not mainly the heat that ends the 
songs of the Thrushes. Heat alone does 
not put out the fire of their May and 
June lives; the fact is their period of 
passion is over by now, irrespective of 
weather. There is some little echo of 
it in the early morning, here a Thrush, 
there a mellow Blackbird, but not more 
than an echo. The Thrush, and a 
score of other earnest singers, are at their 
prime of passion only in the Cuckoo 
half of summer. 
The Later Songsters. 
The Turtle Doves and the Night¬ 
jars belong to the second half, when the 
youth and larger vigour of the year have 
ended. The Greenfinch—rather unim¬ 
portant, though so persistent—and the 
Yellow Hammer—"also unimportant— 
with a few other birds, keep up during 
the later half of summer. There is not 
much “ sturm und drang ” in the lives 
of any of these later birds, save the 
Doves and the Nightjars; at least, this 
is the idea we get from their songs, 
which have none of the notes that sug¬ 
gest passion, fiery earnestness. Those 
loud, fresh, ringing notes belong almost 
wholly to the creative half of summer, 
when “ the palace,” as Mr. Ralph 
Hodgson calls it ip one of his finest 
lyrics, is being hammered into shape 
and size:— 
“ Noise of Hammers once I heard, 
Many Hammers, busy Hammers, 
Beating, shaping, night and day, 
Shaping, beating dust and clay 
To a palace, saw it reared ; 
Saw the Hammers laid away.” 
If the Hammers are at work in mid- 
July, they are muffled, and their work 
is to beat down—that they may rebuild 
next year. 
Starlings and Fruit. 
The vast increase of the Starling in 
various districts, and its appearance in 
modern times in many parts of the 
kingdom where anciently it was un¬ 
known, are, of course, things familiar 
to all those who take an interest in 
British birds and their habits. But even 
now many people awaken very slowly 
to the destructiveness of Starlings dur¬ 
ing the fruit season, or to the fact that 
their legions must, sooner or later, re¬ 
quire thinning. The amount of damage 
done by these birds to fruit crops, 
especially in cherry orchards, is enor¬ 
mous. In Lincolnshire the plague of 
Starlings is being somewhat abated by 
shooting, and large numbers of the 
birds are sold readily at various market 
towns in that county at the rate of 2d. 
apiece. Starlings undoubtedly are use¬ 
ful in devouring caterpillars, wireworms, 
sheep ticks, and other insects ; but their 
ravages upon fruit crops, it is to be 
feared, quite counterbalance any bene- I 
fits they may confer on the farmer in 
that way. Nearly fifty years ago Canon 
Tristram, while exploring the Northern 
Sahara, discovered that the common 
Starling was as great a pest in that part 
of Africa as it now is at home. 
“ Myriads of Starlings,” he says in his 
book, “ The Great Sahara,” “ visit the 
date forests in winter and do incalcul¬ 
able damage to the ripe fruit. They are 
snared and destroyed by thousands, 
being prized for food. In spring not a 
straggler remains in Africa.” The 
Starling, by the way, is by no means 
bad eating, and a tithing from the im¬ 
mense legions that now throng Britain 
ought to be very acceptable to many of 
our poor folk. 
