Starling Hosts
Too many starlings in a given place are likely to be a serious trouble—in fact they make a place almost impossible for other inhabitants. Starlings haunt many kinds of roosting-places—the high reeds, the woods, and the shrubs about a house. The keeper finds small pleasure in the thunderous noise of their wings in his coverts. Towards the end of October the sales of underwood take place; thereafter the underwood is cut, and this often drives the starlings from an old roosting-haunt to fresh woods, where their presence is far from desirable, in view of the approaching covert-shooting. Naturally, people hesitate to take preventive measures, such as shooting or lighting fires of green wood, for the shots or the smoke would drive away pheasants as well as starlings. Yet it is wiser thus to drive away one season's pheasants than to have the wood made impossible for many years—to all save starlings.
STARLINGS ROOSTING ON REEDS.
LONDON, EDWARD ARNOLD.