Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/163

Rh with a few feathers or bits of wool. The eggs are of a lovely pale blue, sometimes white, and vary greatly in size and proportions. As soon as the young are hatched the parents display intense activity in searching for food to satisfy their enormous appetites. There are generally five or six nests round my house, and I often watch the Starlings from my bedroom window while dressing in the morning. They regularly search every inch of the lawn for worms, insects, and grubs, and never failed to do this during the past dry summer, although, as there were hardly any worm-casts to be seen, the worms had evidently left the surface-soil and retired to the moister earth below; so that the search must have been rather a "forlorn hope." As soon as the Starlings have exhausted the lawn they go farther afield, and they do an immense amount of good by destroying noxious grubs and insects. In reply to a letter of mine on the subject, the Rev. J.B. Meredith writes:—"I agree with you that Starlings are most useful birds. I do not think they affect the earthworm which makes the worm-casts so much as the wireworm; hence their diligent search of your lawn even in the drought. You have evidently never had your cherry trees cleared by them in dozens and in scores as I have every year; and I have also caught them in the act of stealing raspberries, currants, damsons, and ripe pears—watched them gorging at them—though they do not systematically go for these as they do for cherries."

In regard to this matter, the only cherry tree in my garden is a "Morello," and the fruit is too sour for most birds. I have not seen the Starlings attack the other fruits mentioned, but have seen Blackbirds doing so frequently.

Mr. G.H. Paddock relates that his father used to shoot the Starlings round the house at Caynton, Newport; he urged him not to do so on the ground that they were such useful birds in destroying worms, &c, and at last persuaded him to give them a year's trial. As he anticipated, "the difference in the turf was most marked; it was no longer unsightly from worm-expellings, the Starlings hunting it over first thing every morning." Since then they have been protected; an empty oyster-barrel which Mr. Paddock put up for them in a tree was adopted for a nesting-place by a pair of Starlings the very next morning. Under date Dec. 9th, 1899, Mr. Paddock adds;—"During this summer the