Another familiar bird of the farm is the Starling--a species that does not reveal its beauty unless examined minutely. There are few birds in this country more gorgeously arrayed with metallic sheen than a fine old cock Starling in the full flush and vigour of spring plumage. His lemon-yellow bill at this season also increases the effect. As harmless as it is useful, it keeps close company with the Rooks, although it shows little inclination to follow those birds on to the arable land; it loves the grass fields and manure heaps, being somewhat of an unclean feeder. Then it always selects a covered site of some kind for nesting purposes, being most adaptive in this respect. We used to place boxes for its accommodation in the trees; and we have known a disused pigeon-cot fastened to a high wall packed to its utmost capacity with nests. Few birds are more attached to their breeding-place. For many years a pair of Starlings bred in a hole in a tall elm-tree in one of the fields. From this nest we actually obtained forty eggs in a season, and sometimes for a couple of years in succession the birds did not succeed in raising a brood. Every summer the Starlings of the entire district gathered into one or two large flocks, and these came evening by evening to roost in a cluster of white-thorns until the late autumn, when they changed their quarters to the evergreens close by. Another thing that endears the Starling to us is its perennial song. Few other song-birds make so much fuss over their music as the Starling. Action of some kind seems always essential to vocal effort; and the way he erects almost every feather, or sways about or stands in some grotesque attitude, during his periods of song is most entertaining. The House Sparrow is another familiar bird of the farm and garden. Unfortunately he is far too common for most farmers, especially in the vicinity of large towns and villages; and the way these pilfering birds will thresh out a field of wheat or oats is literally surprising. Friends of the Sparrow, usually utterly ignorant of its habits and the serious mischief it can do, cannot understand the farmers' indignation, and are always protesting against its wanton slaughter. But then there is reason in all things, and in grain-growing districts the bird should be kept down. The boy with his clappers amongst the corn may, if he conscientiously sticks to his work (and this rarely happens), keep the vast flocks of Sparrows on the move, but the birds will gorge themselves with grain meantime; whilst shooting round the fields is little more effective, for the feathered thieves soon desert the hedge-sides and settle in the centre of the crops, where it is next to impossible to dislodge them, or to alarm them by repeated discharges of the gun. The Sparrow nuisance is philosophically endured by many farmers, and regarded, like the weather, as beyond their control. In some cases we have known farmers absolutely cease growing corn at all because the birds take such a large proportion of the crop! Here the usefulness of the Sparrow-hawk becomes only too apparent, but the keepers shoot that bird down--every one they can reach--and the Sparrows have things all their own way.