might say after witnessing and listening to this evening performance that they have great joy in their rascally lives.
But for the poor starling there is little joy in these brief, dark, wet winter days, even if there is little frost in this West Cornwall climate. A frost of a few days' duration would be fatal to incalculable numbers, especially if, as in the great frosts of the winters of 1894-5 and 1896-7, severest in the south and west of England, it should come late in winter, I think it can be taken as a fact that a long or overseas migration takes place before midwinter or not at all. In January and February, when birds are driven to the limits of the land by a great cold they do not cross the sea, either because they are too weak to attempt such an adventure or for some other reason unknown to us. We see that on these occasions they come to the seashore and follow it south and west even to the western extremity of Cornwall, and then either turn back inland or wait where they are for open weather, many perishing in the meantime.
During those three winter months, when I watched the starlings at work on the field before
292 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE
my hospital window, they appeared to be in a perpetual state of extreme hunger and were always running over the ground, rapidly prodding as they moved, and apparently finding their food almost exclusively on the surface--that is to say, on the surface of the soil but under the grass, at its surface roots. At other seasons they go deep when they know from the appearance of every blade of grass whether or not there is a grub feeding on its roots beneath the surface. Without shooting and examining the stomachs of a large number of starlings it was not possible to know just what the food consisted of; but with my strong binocular on them I could make out that at almost every dig of the beak something was picked up, and could actually see it when the beak was held up with the minute morsel at its tip--a small, thread-like, semi-transparent worm or grub in most instances. Two or three of these atomies would hardly have made a square meal for a ladybird, and I should think that a starling after swallowing a thousand would fed very hungry. And on many days this scanty, watery food had to be searched for in very painful conditions, as it rained heavily on most days and
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often all day long. At such times the birds in their sodden plumage looked like drowned starlings fished out of a pool and galvanized into activity. Nor were they even seen to shake the wet off--a common action in swallows and other birds that feed in the rain; they were too hungry, too anxious to find something to eat to keep the starling soul and body together before the long night of eighteen or twenty hours would overtake them.
No doubt the winter of 1915-16 was exceptionally wet and cold, although without any severe frosts; a long frost in February, when the birds were most reduced, would probably have proved fatal to at least half their number. But though it continued wet and cold, things began to mend for the starlings towards the end of February, and in March the improvement was very marked; they were not in such a perpetual hurry; their time was longer now, and by the end of the month their working day had increased from five or six to twelve or fourteen hours, and the light had increased and grubs were easier to find. By April, the starlings no longer appeared to be the same species as the poor, rusty, be-