The Starling is a very lively, jovial bird, very active, hunting about, and chattering over what it snaps up. It is also very sociable. These birds often collect in such numbers, in places, where a wood is bounded by pastures or reed-beds that when the flock rises together, it throws a shadow like a dark cloud. It specially seeks out flocks—cattle, horses, sheep or pigs, and stalks about in their shadow, under the very noses of the wallowing swine, in order to drag out of the earth the desired worms, in company with the Blue headed Wagtail. It also perches on the bodies of the beasts, and operates on them where there are maggots or worms. The animal knows the bird is doing him a good turn, and remains perfectly still.
It is true that this bird also attacks cherries, blackberries, raspberries and grapes; and, if present in numbers, it does, indeed, considerable harm.—Then it must be frightened off with rattles, blank-shot, and whatever else is of use. Still, the year through, it does a thousand times more good than harm and therefore deserves to be protected and cherished.
It becomes very tame and trusting in captivity and can be easily taught. It can learn to sing tunes and speak words—and becomes attached to its owner.
Mrs. Edward Phillips of Croydon rescued forty starlings once from the pockets of a working man who said he was selling them to serve as pigeon dummies, in shooting matches amongst his friends. Needless to say she paid for and set them at liberty. I was struck with the scarcity of Starlings in the centre of France, and country folks there told me they were getting scarce. Perhaps they were not much protected, for I saw in Anjou a family of the young birds in the hands of a boy who told me he was carrying them home to train for sale as singing and talking pets. They are not good to eat and yet they will feed on them in that part—birds these that, if spared, eat up tons of those grubs and larvæ which ruin the crops in the field. Sometimes even they have been shut up and fed on vegetable diet to make them taste better. This has only made the bird thinner, proof positive that the enemies of “green stuff” and not itself form their natural diet. Feeding as they do at all seasons on our pasture lands the services they render are incalculable.
In November, or somewhat earlier, they arrive on our east coasts in great numbers; whilst others migrate westward, deserting some localities entirely for a time. Great numbers also visit the South of Ireland then. They settle on the salt marshes for a while sometimes; but often they pass on further inland in perfect silence, with a swift direct flight, and a way altogether unlike their usual chattering fussy ways. They begin to pair in January in some of our districts. Naturalists call them Ambulatores, or walking birds; they are quaint creatures in all their ways and habits. Of late years they have been accused of pecking into apples more than is desirable. As the season advanced, and fruit was not so varied and plentiful, I used to find that when all the leaves were off my pear trees—in a former home—they ate the few pears that were left hanging high up until nothing but stalk was left, but they touched neither apples nor pears whilst the leaves were on the trees.
The best way of keeping Starlings away from high cherry trees, that I have seen, is fixing a long narrow flag to a strong top branch. Large flocks of them resort to cowfolds, where the stock are all night, and before these are let out the birds are there seeking for larvæ and worms in the dried dung, perching now and anon on the backs of the cattle, chattering low all the time. They rid trees of caterpillars, and the turnip fields, where they have been known to clear these of “fly”; also to visit field peas that were infected with aphides and do good work there; and they devour great numbers of Daddy-longlegs. Waterton,—that past-master in the art of observing and chronicling the doings of birds, wrote: “There is not a bird in all Great Britain more harmless than the Starling: still, it has to suffer persecution, and is often doomed to see its numbers thinned by the hand of wantonness or error. The author of ‘Journal of a Naturalist’ observed a pair of Starlings having young ones for several days, and he wrote, ‘It appears probable that this pair, in conjunction, do not travel less than 50 miles a day, visiting and feeding their young about 140 times, which, consisting of five in number, and admitting only one to be fed each time, every bird must receive in this period twenty portions of food.”
In 1891 twelve farmers, replying to Miss Ormerod’s question as to which kinds of birds were specially useful in destroying caterpillars, all replied in favour of the Starling. Now what, after all, matters a little fruit taken from private gardens in view of all this good work done. And as to the professional fruit grower, it will pay him to employ a boy or two during a short season of the year, to keep birds off his trees.
Sir Herbert Maxwell, who writes on the whole in favour of Starlings, and remarks truly that all naturalists are agreed that the good they do outweighs the evil, says that “from many a dovecote the legitimate occupants have been expelled by the intrusion of these irrepressible creatures.” And Waterton wrote, “The farmer complains that it sucks his pigeons’ eggs, and when the gunner and his assembly wish, the keeper is ordered to close the holes of entrance to the dovecot overnight, and the next morning three or four dozen of Starlings are captured to be shot.... Alas! these poor Starlings had merely resorted to it for shelter and protection, and were in no way responsible for the fragments of egg-shells which were strewed on the floor.... The rat and the weasel were the real destroyers,” etc.
The Starling is as big as a thrush; it has bluish iridescent plumage, the feathers tipped with white. Beak relatively small, brow flat; eyes near the base of the beak, which gives it a cunning expression. The feathers are small and tapering at the point; beak yellowish. The hen is paler, the young ones still more so. The legs are strong, with sharp claws. It selects for its nest holes in oak trees in the woods near which is pasture land or water stocked with reeds and rushes. In warmer regions it breeds twice in the summer. The first clutch consists of five to seven eggs, the second of four or five of a pale light blue colour.