RED-WINGED STARLING. 
157 
pied throughout the day in pulling up and devouring the 
plants, returning to the work of spoliation as often as driven 
away. Wheat, maize, and corn of every species is preyed on, 
rice also, and all manner of seeds and berries, and likewise 
insects and caterpillars, but these latter only, or chiefly, when 
in lack of the former, though as they search for them at 
such times with unremitting assiduity in every situation and 
place, the numbers they destroy must he incalculable. When 
the corn is reaped, they assume the right of gleaning in the 
fields, and not content with this privilege, they afterwards 
follow the crop to the farm-yard, and there too pilfer all 
that they can from the harvest-home. Any indirect benefit 
therefore that they may have been of is lost sight of in 
the presence of the direct injury, and tens of thousands of 
the marauding multitudes are slaughtered, though still no 
apparent diminution is made. At night the reed-beds are 
set fire to, and as the cloud of birds rises from it, a regiment 
of shooters discharge volley after volley, and the field is 
strewn with the slain. In like manner the Indians, who 
usually plant their corn in one common field, employ all the 
boys of the village throughout the day in tending their 
growing crop, and, each armed with a bow and arrows, these 
incipient Lockesleys contrive with great expertness to destroy 
large numbers. The Hawks too of various kinds dash into 
their close ranks, and though the flock instantly opens on 
all sides, on the principle of ‘sauve qui peut,’ some are 
almost sure to become victims. 
Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucien Buonaparte, in their 
‘American Ornithology,’ give the following calculation of the 
good effected by these birds in return for whatever grain 
they may consume:—‘Their general food at this season, as 
well as during the early part of summer, consists of cater¬ 
pillars and various other larvae, the silent but deadly enemies 
of all vegetation, and whose secret and insidious attacks are 
more to be dreaded by the husbandman than the combined 
forces of the whole feathered tribe together. For those 
vermin the Starlings search with great diligence, in the 
ground, at the roots of plants, in orchards and meadows, 
as well as among buds, leaves, and blossoms; and from 
their known voracity, the multitudes of those insects which 
they destroy must be immense. Let me illustrate this by a 
short computation: if we suppose each bird, on an average, 
to devour fifty of these larvse in a day, (a very moderate 
allowance,) a single pair, in four months, the usual time such 
