The Starlings 
93 
THE STARLING 
The starling has been introduced to New Zealand, and is 
firmly established throughout the islands, ranging from the 
high mountain lands to the cities. 
“Its song is as imitative as that of the vaunted mocking¬ 
bird/’ says Yarrell (YH, Ed. 4, Vol. 2, p. 229), “.starlings 
consort with many kinds of birds, learn their notes, and 
frequently mingle them in their own strain. ” (1 It learns, 
says Bechstein, (BC, p. 329), “.to repeat words, whistle airs 
(a power shared by the females also), and to imitate the voices 
of men and animals, and the song of birds.” It has, besides, 
says this writer, a peculiar harp-like song of its own. I have 
not heard it sing with a full voice: that is, the sound always 
seemed forced, more as if the bird were “recording” than 
singing; or as if perpetually uttering its whisper-song. It is 
able to repeat the cry of the quail exactly; but as there have 
been no quail within considerable distances of places where I 
have heard this, I am almost sure that it is not imitation, but 
that these are among the natural notes of the bird. 
One January I was at Kapiti, in Cook Strait, and lay on a 
tree-dotted grassy slope near the sea. It was evening, and I 
had noted a bell-bird’s whisper song, when I looked up to the 
sunset sky towards the south end of the island, an islet, Toko, 
lying before me, distant about two miles. The sky above the 
islet was a blending of cumulo-stratus, touched with palest 
purple, yellow, and pink,—so pale that they were the shadows 
rather than the lights of those hues. The suffused clouds had 
shape, but no sharp definiteness. The hills of the mainland 
beyond were hazy-blue, the stretch of sea below me opalescent, 
and lightly rippled. My eye was drawn to a moving cloud 
above the islet; a cloud that formed, and vanished, and formed, 
like a cloud in the bine deeps of a summer sky, only with 
swifter transitions. It was a flight of starlings, many hundreds 
