158 
RED-WINGED STARLING. 
food is sought after, will consume upwards of twelve thousand. 
It is believed that not less than a million pairs of these 
birds are distributed over the whole extent of the United 
States in summer; whose food, being nearly the same, would 
swell the amount of vermin destroyed to twelve thousand 
millions. But the number of young birds may be fairly 
estimated at double that of their parents; and as these are 
constantly fed on larvse for at least three weeks, making only 
the same allowance for them as for the old ones, their share 
would amount to four thousand two hundred millions; 
making a grand total of sixteen thousand two hundred 
millions of noxious insects destroyed in the space of four 
months by this single species! The combined ravages of 
such a hideous host of vermin would be sufficient to spread 
famine and desolation over a wide extent of the richest 
and best cultivated country on earth. 
All this, it may be said, is mere supposition. It is, 
however, supposition founded on known and acknowledged 
facts. I have never dissected any of these birds in spring 
without receiving the most striking and satisfactory proof of 
these facts; and though, in a matter of this kind, it is 
impossible to ascertain precisely the amount of the benefits 
derived by agriculture from this, and many other species of 
our birds, yet, in the present case, I cannot resist the belief 
that the services of this species, in spring, are far more 
important and beneficial than the value of all that portion 
of corn which a careful and active farmer permits himself 
to lose by it.’ 
The Bed-winged Starlings are very vociferous, even in the 
depth of winter, so that the dejected face of nature is 
enlivened by their ceaseless notes, and likewise during their 
migrations a constant strain of conversation is kept up, which, 
as harbinging the return of spring, is a welcome sound even 
to those who are doomed to suffer from their ravages. Their 
most common note resembles the syllables ‘con-quer-ree,’ 
others are like the sound produced by the filing of a saw, 
some are more guttural, and others remarkably clear; both 
male and female have an ordinary ‘chuck.’ 
About the middle of April the birds pair, and nidification 
commences the last week in April, or the beginning of May, 
or even later, according to the latitude in which they happen 
to be. 
The nest is placed variously in a bush or tree, a few feet 
from the ground, or in a tussock of rushes or tuft of grass, 
