275

STARLING.

Tue starling is a very common and well-known
British bird. It is also a very handsome one, being of
a rich deep purple black colour, with shades of metallic
green, and spotted more or less all over with white
spots. The older the bird, however, the fewer the spots,
so that in age it has but very few, if any. The young
bird too is without spots, being entirely of a uniform
dull dark brown colour, so unlike to the dress which
it afterwards assumes, that it was formerly thought to
be a different species, and was so described under the
hame of the solitary thrush.

These birds “are found abundantly in all the lower
paris of Britain, and in the most northerly of the islands;
they mingle freely with most flocking birds, and do not
hesitate to alight in numbers among domestic animals
in the meadows and other pastures. They are partial
to humid places, and do not very much frequent the
elevated and arid moors; and in the cold season they
migrate in vast numbers to the low and warm coun-
tries, and to the shores of the sea. They are, at
all seasons, very lively birds, whistling, chattering, and
gliding about on the wing, which they generally do in
curves, and with a smooth motion. On the ground they
walk neatly, and with considerable velocity, but do not
hop. The starling is the smallest of all our resident
birds allied to the crow tribe, and it is one of the least
rapacious, confining itself to insects and seeds, (chiefly
the former,) like the chough, and never killing other
birds, or probably robbing any nest. It has been accused