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.”