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PERCHING BIRDS. 
Starlings are found throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, with the exception of 
New Zealand. 
In the typical genus ( Sturnus ) the beak is as long as the 
’ head, and blunt at the tip and depressed, its edges being quite 
smooth; the wings are long and pointed, and the tail is short and squared. 
The members of the genus principally inhabit the temperate regions of Europe 
and Asia, as well as Northern Africa. 
common Breeding commonly in most parts of temperate Europe, although 
starling’. more rarely in the north than in the central districts of the Continent, 
the common starling {Sturnus vulgaris) is one of the most adaptive of birds, in 
consequence of which its range is steadily increasing. In the British Islands it 
has increased of late years to an extraordinary extent. So long as the starling con¬ 
tented itself with nesting sporadically in the pigeon-houses of farms and in hollow 
trees, as, for example, in the London parks, the public naturally desired to afford 
protection to so charming a bird; and there can be no doubt that it merits much 
interest, since it works assiduously to destroy the larvae of such injurious insects 
as the crane-fly. 
At the same time it is only right that we should take into account the 
heavy loss which fruit-growers frequently sustain from the inroads of hordes of 
hungry starlings; the extraordinary numbers of these birds which visit orchards 
of ripe fruit almost defying description. Quite recently the starling has 
developed an alarming fondness for ripe pears and apples; nor does he altogether 
disdain wild fruit; even the berries of the mountain-ash are much to his taste, 
and he constantly strips them with extreme pertinacity. When feeding on grass 
lands, in company with thrushes, the starling is apt to play the part of a 
bully, robbing his gentler neighbours of their fairly-earned subsistence. 
In addition to being a vocalist of no mean order, the starling is a first-class 
mimic, and delights in reproducing familiar sounds with the greatest fidelity 
to truth. We have heard individual starlings reproduce the call - note of 
the skylark, goldfinch, wagtail, and other small birds ; sometimes we have been 
startled on a winter’s day to recognise the cry of the common sandpiper or the 
grating call-note of a fern-owl in the middle of a crowded city, and have discovered 
the author of our astonishment in the person of a starling, that is pouring forth 
his rhapsodies from some neighbouring chimney-top. Perfection is not easily 
acquired; but the starling practises his performances until he acquires a high 
measure of proficiency. 
The starling does not, however, confine his attention to the reproducing the notes 
of other birds; any sound that strikes his fancy being rehearsed time after time, until 
the sharpest expert might be deceived. Not long ago, one of these birds astonished 
its human neighbours by reproducing the hammering of a stonemason, who had been 
engaged in dressing stone. The starling nests in April, and the young usually fly 
.about the end of May; many pairs rearing two broods of young in a season. Some 
birds nest in the recesses of sea-caves in company with rock-doves and black 
guillemots ; others rear their broods in the interior of old stone walls; while others 
again inhabit and enlarge the burrows of sand-martins in some perpendicular cliff'; 
by far the greater number nest, however, about human habitations; In some 
