When starling and sparrow shooting-matches declined, the starling went out of favour as a table-bird, and from that time the species has been increasing. At present the rate of increase grows from year to year, and during the last decade the birds have colonized every portion of the north of Scotland and the islands, where the starling had previously been a rare visitor--a bird unknown to the people. Here in West Cornwall where I am writing this chapter the starling was only a winter visitor until recently. Eight years ago I could only find two pairs breeding in the villages--about twenty-five in number--in which I looked for them; in the summer of 1915 I found them breeding in every town and village I visited. At present, June, 1916, there are six pairs in the village I am staying at. It may be the case, and from conversations I have had with farmers about the bird I am inclined to believe it is so, that a strong feeling in favour of the starling (in the pastoral districts) is growing up at the present time, a feeling which in the end is more powerful to protect than any law; but such a feeling has not become general as yet, and consequently has had nothing to do with the extraordinary increase of the bird. The wood-pigeon is another species which, like the starling, has increased greatly in recent years, without special protection and with no sentiment in its favour. . . . The sentiment is all confined to the nature-lovers, whose words have no effect on the people generally, least of all on the farmers. I am reminded here of the experience of a young man, an ardent bird-lover, on his visit to a Yorkshire farm. His host, who was also a young man, took him a walk across his fields. It was a spring day of brilliant sunshine, and the air was full of the music of scores of soaring skylarks. The visitor long in cities pent, was exhilarated by the strains and kept on making exclamations of rapturous delight, "Just listen to the larks! Did you ever hear anything like it!" and so on. His host, his eyes cast down, trudged on in glum silence. Finally the young man, carried away by his enthusiasm, stopped and turning to his companion shouted, "Listen! Listen! Do you hear the larks?" "Oh, yes," drawled the other, looking more glum than ever, "I hear them fast enough. And I wish they were all dead!" So with the other charming species. The moan of doves in immemorial elms is a pleasing sound to the poets, but it does not prevent the farmers throughout the land from wishing them all dead; and every person who possesses a gun is glad to help in their massacre. For the bird is a pest and he who shoots it is doing something for England; furthermore, shooting it is first-rate sport, not like slaughtering wretched little sparrows or innocent young rooks just out of their windy cradles. And when shot it is a good table-bird, with as much tasty flesh on it as a woodcock or partridge.