The time will come, let us hope, when for half a dozen species of small birds in London we shall have two dozen, or even fifty; until then the sparrow, even the common gutter-sparrow, is a bird to be thankful for.
The starling ranks second to the sparrow in numbers; but albeit second, the interval is very great: the starlings’ thousands are but a small tribe compared to the sparrows’ numerous nation.
It has been said that the starling is almost as closely associated with man as the sparrow. That is hardly the case; in big towns the sparrow, like the rat and black beetle, although not in so unpleasant a way, is parasitical on man, whereas the starling is perfectly independent. He frequents human habitations because they provide him with suitable breeding-holes; he builds in a house, or barn, or church tower, just as he does in a hole in a tree in a wild forest, or a hole in the rock on some sea-cliff, where instead of men and women he has puffins, guillemots, and gannets for neighbours. The roar of the sea or the jarring noises of human traffic and industry—it is all one to the starling. That is why he is a London bird. In the breeding season he is to be found diffused over the entire metropolis, an astonishing fact when we consider that he does not, like the sparrow, find his food in the roads, back gardens, and small spaces near his nest, but, like the rook, must go a considerable distance for it.
Two seasons ago (1896) one pair of starlings had their nest close to my house—a treeless district, most desolate. When the young were hatched I watched the old birds going and coming, and on leaving the nest they invariably flew at a good height above the chimney-pots and telegraph wires, in the direction of the Victoria Gate of Hyde Park. They returned the same way. It is fully two miles to the park in that direction. The average number of eggs in a starling’s nest is six; and assuming that these birds had four or five young, we can imagine what an enormous labour it must have been to supply them with suitable insect food, each little beakful of grubs involving a return journey of at least four miles; and the grubs would certainly be very much more difficult to find on the trodden sward of Hyde Park than in a country meadow. I pitied these brave birds every day, when I watched them from my turret window, going and coming, and at the same time I rejoiced to think that this pair, and hundreds of other pairs with nests just as far from their scanty feeding-grounds, were yet able to rear their young each season in London.
LONDON STARLINGS
For the starling is really a splendid bird as birds are with us in this distant northern land—splendid in his spangled glossy dress of metallic purple, green, and bronze, a singer it is always pleasant to listen to, a flyer in armies and crowds whose aërial evolutions in autumn and winter, before settling to roost each evening, have long been the wonder and admiration of mankind. He inhabits London all the year round, but not in the same numbers: in the next chapter more will be said on this point. He also sings throughout the year; on any autumn or winter day a small company or flock of a dozen or two of birds may be found in any park containing large trees, and it is a delight that never grows stale to listen to the musical conversation, or concert of curiously contrasted sounds, perpetually going on among them. The airy whistle, the various chirp, the clink-clink as of a cracked bell, the low chatter of mixed harsh and musical sounds, the kissing and finger-cracking, and those long metallic notes, as of a saw being filed not unmusically, or (as a friend suggests) as of milking a cow in a tin pail;—however familiar you may be with the starling, you cannot listen to one of their choirs without hearing some new sound. There is more variety in the starling than in any other species, and not only in his language; if you observe him closely for a short time, he will treat you to a sudden and surprising transformation. Watch him when absorbed in his own music, especially when emitting his favourite saw-filing or milking-a-cow-in-a-tin-pail sounds: he trembles on his perch—shivers as with cold—his feathers puffed out, his wings hanging as if broken, his beak wide open, and the long pointed feathers of his swollen throat projected like a ragged beard. He is then a most forlorn-looking object, apparently broken up and falling to pieces; suddenly the sounds cease, and in the twinkling of an eye he is once more transformed into the neat, compact, glossy, alert starling!
Something further may be said about the pair of starlings that elected to breed the summer before last in sight of my top windows, in that brick desert where my home is. When they brought out and led their young away, I wondered if they would ever return to such a spot. Surely, thought I, they will have some recollection of the vast labour of rearing a nestful of young at such a distance from their feeding-ground, and when summer comes once more will be tempted to settle somewhere nearer to the park. The Albert Memorial, for instance, gorgeous with gold and bright colour, might attract them; certainly there was room for them, since it had in the summer of 1896 but one pair of starlings for tenants. It was consequently something of a surprise when, on March 23 last spring, early in the morning, the birds reappeared at the same place, and spent over an hour in fluttering about and exploring the old breeding-hole, perching on the slates and chimney-pots, and clinging to the brick wall, fluttering their wings, screaming and whistling as if almost beside themselves with joy to be at home once more.