Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/162

134 distance. The number of birds assembling each night in autumn at this roost is enormous, and towards the end of September or early in October it is further increased by flocks from Caynton and other places. The reason for this is curious. Where the roost is situated on a reed-bed, the reeds get so completely broken down in autumn—when they are much more brittle than in summer—that the Starlings cannot get a footing on them. Thus it happens that roosts of this kind are always deserted early in October. At Caynton Mr. Paddock says that when the reeds break down the Starlings resort to a bed of osiers on another part of the pool, and finally desert those when the leaves fall off. Roosts of the other class—on trees and underwoods—are resorted to much longer. Indeed, the one at Moreton Corbet is never quite deserted; a few small flocks resorting to it through the winter and spring, and even in the breeding season.

The general habits of the Starling may be thus described: During summer they scatter in pairs all over the country to breed, except perhaps small flocks of young birds that do not breed. Even now they seem not to lose their gregariousness, for I have often found from twenty to thirty nests within such a limited area as the ruins of Haughmond Abbey. This is probably more apparent than real, and is due to the number of convenient nesting-holes in such localities. The nest is generally placed in some kind of cavity—in a hole in a tree or wall, under the eaves of houses, amongst piles of loose stones, in a rotten tree-stump, &c. Very rarely it is open to the air, and last year I noticed a very queer instance on the Buries, close to my house at Bayston Hill. It was on a large branch of a very tall ash tree close to the trunk, and, as far as I could see from below, was made entirely of sheep's wool! I watched the bird on and off the nest several times, or should never have recognized the lump of wool as a Starling's nest.

Mr. R. Moses writes that for several years in succession two Starlings' nests were to be seen in Shrewsbury, wedged in between two chimney-stacks four inches apart; they rested on nothing, and it is a mystery how the birds began them. Mr. Palmer says he has several times found the nest in ivy against a tree-trunk.

Ordinarily the nest is an untidy mass of hay or straw, lined