on walking through a city park on a blustery winter day one suddenly spies the little bird houses, built by the custodian and perched high up among the branches of the trees, a smile invariably creeps over the face and a thought of summer steals into the tired brain. Would that the building of bird houses became more fashionable among our boys!
One of the simplest and most artistic of them may be formed from a cocoanut shell. The opening may be so made that the piece of shell cut out can be turned up like a little porch roof over the door. If these be fixed just at nest-building time and the architect should kindly leave the nut inside the shell the birds will be most grateful.
Down south many of the door-yard trees seem to be growing gourd fruit. In reality the gourds (with an opening in the side of each) are tied on or hung there by means of their own crooked necks to make nests for the birds.
Sometimes one may see whole rows of them upon a pole which is nailed to a stable roof and often they are found hanging to the ragged edge of the roof of a negro cabin. As far as I can learn, the idea originated with the colored people, who take great pride in the number of birds they can attract about them by this and other kindly means. The little yellow houses seem to delight the birds so much that one is seldom put up in vain, and the tenants pay lavishly with coins of song and many a trill of joy.
THE LIGHT OF THE LEAVES
Hurry, skurry through the air
Leaves are falling everywhere.
Gold and crimson meet or miss
Smile or blush at the frost king’s kiss.
Whirling, twirling, o’er the ground,
Forced by merry winds around;
Piled by childish hands on high,
There, like martyred saints, to die.
Crackle crackle, sound their knells,
Imprisoned sunshine in them dwells
Like tiny tongues, ’twixt earth and sky
They whisper love to passers by.
Falling, ever falling, they,
Consumed to make the world more gay;
The misty cloud of smoke o’erhead
Seems like the veil Shakina spread.
Down and down comes memory’s leaf,
Bright with hopes or sere with grief;
The brightest one in life’s huge pile
Is that from which our bonfires smile.
THE STARLING
(Sturnus vulgaris.)
The Starling belongs to an interesting family of birds, represented in America by but one species and that one only recently introduced. In the Old World, however, there are about two hundred species which are widely distributed throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.
The common Starling is a native of Europe and northern Asia and is admitted to the bird fauna of North America both because of its accidental occurence in Greenland and of its introduction into the parks of New York city. Regarding its introduction into this country, Mr. Chapman says that it has been brought across the ocean on several occasions, but only in the case of the last importation was the effort to make it establish a home within our borders a success. “The birds included in this lot, about sixty in number, were released in Central Park, New York city, in 1890. They seem to have left the park and to have established themselves in various favorable places in the upper part of the city. They have bred for three successive years in the roof of the Museum of Natural History and at other points in the vicinity. In the suburbs about the northern end of the city they are frequently observed in flocks containing as many as fifty individuals.” From the fact that it is a resident throughout the year and has endured our most severe winters Mr. Chapman thinks that the species may be regarded as thoroughly naturalized.
The common Starling easily adapts itself to its environment and can withstand quite a diversity of climatic conditions. However, while it was introduced with difficulty in the eastern United States, efforts made to introduce it into the State of Oregon have not met with success. Wherever the conditions are favorable it breeds rapidly and not uncommonly a pair will rear two broods in a season.
This engaging bird has commanded the attention of observers for centuries. Pliny speaks of it in his Natural History, and one writer has said that “its varied song, its sprightly gestures, its glossy plumage, and, above all its character as an insecticide – which last makes it a friend of the agriculturist and the grazier – render it an almost universal favorite.” Some of the notes of the Starling’s song are harsh but on the whole the song is pleasing and “heard as they are, at a season when every sign of returning spring is eagerly looked for and welcomed, are certainly one of the most cheerful sounds that greet the ear.” Its whole energy is thrown into the song, which is uttered with ruffled feathers. It is also a mimic of no mean order. One authority says that it delights “in reproducing familiar sounds with the greatest fidelity to truth. We have heard individual Starlings reproduce the call notes of the skylark, goldfinch, wagtail, and other small birds; sometimes we have been startled on a winter’s day to recognize the cry of the common sandpiper or the grating call note of a fern owl in the middle of a crowded city, and have discovered the author of our astonishment in the person of a Starling, that is pouring forth his rhapsodies from some neighboring chimney top.” Pliny says: “Agrippina, the wife of Claudius Caesar, had a thrush that could imitate the human speech, a thing that was never known before. At the moment that I am writing this, the young Caesars have a Starling and some nightingales that are being taught to talk in Greek and Latin; besides which, they are studying their task the whole day, continually repeating the new words that they have learnt, and giving utterance to phrases even of considerable length.” The young birds are very noisy and while feeding and training them the parents are scarcely less so. So great, in fact, is this noisy babble that it often becomes very unpleasant.
The Starling is a gregarious bird at all times, but this habit is more marked after the breeding season has passed. It has its favorite haunts and, though a flock may be dispersed during the daytime while feeding, all will congregate in the favorite locality at nightfall. Mr. William Yarrell, in his “British Birds,” gives an interesting anecdote regarding the abundance and social habits of the Starling. Speaking of an English estate, he says, “This locality is an evergreen plantation covering several acres, to which these birds repair in an evening – I was going to say, and I believe I might truly say – by millions, from the low ground about the Severn, where their noise is something altogether unusual. By packing in such myriads upon the evergreens, they have stripped them of their leaves, except just at the tops, and have driven the pheasants, for whom the plantation was intended, quite away from the grounds.”
Regarding their nesting and mating habits Mr. Henry Seebohm says: “Early in April, sometimes not until the beginning of May, the Starlings have mostly mated and gone to their breeding holes. Previous to this, however, much quarreling goes on for the choice of suitable sites. The strong gain the best holes, while the weak seek quarters elsewhere. The Starling will build its nest almost anywhere, and it needs but slight encouragement to take up its quarters in any suitable hole or box placed for its reception. It will even dislodge large tiles and burrow considerable distances under the eaves, and its bulky nest often stops up some spout, to the dismay of the householder. A hole in the gable or inside the dovecot are also favorite places, while its partiality for holes in the trees is none the less. It also commonly breeds in ruins, churches, and old masonry of every description. In the wilder portions of the country the Starling selects a hole either in a tree or a rock for its purpose, and it will often breed in great numbers in caves or in crevices of the ocean cliffs.” The nest is not a fine piece of bird architecture. It is coarse and slovenly constructed with dry grass, fibers, twigs, small roots, rags, twine, paper and in fact of any substance that strikes the fancy of the bird. It is lined, though not always, with wool, vegetable down and feathers. At times when the nest is placed in hollow