The Starling is as big as a thrush; it has bluish iridescent plumage, the feathers tipped with white. Beak relatively small, brow flat; eyes near the base of the beak, which gives it a cunning expression. The feathers are small and tapering at the point; beak yellowish. The hen is paler, the young ones still more so. The legs are strong, with sharp claws. It selects for its nest holes in oak trees in the woods near which is pasture land or water stocked with reeds and rushes. In warmer regions it breeds twice in the summer. The first clutch consists of five to seven eggs, the second of four or five of a pale light blue colour. THE ROSE STARLING. (_Pastor roseus._) In Hungary this bird is only a summer guest, and single pairs may be met with in various parts of the country. Its appearance in large numbers always coincides with the time of the grasshopper plague;--a fact which was first observed in 1814. The distinguished Hungarian ornithologist, Petényi, described his observations in 1837. He states that, so long as the grasshoppers are not fully developed, the bird feeds on all sorts of insects; but as soon as the grasshopper is sufficiently matured, this insect forms its sole food, and is pursued with great eagerness. Thus, in the year 1907 great numbers of Rose Starlings appeared on the well-known Puerta of Hortshágy where just at that time the grasshopper plague was raging. There we may enjoy the spectacle which Petényi described as follows: “To the eye of the beholder a flock of these birds in flight has the appearance of a roseate cloud, always moving,--backwards, forwards, sideways, in ever changing forms of beauty--or, alighting, they give an exquisite impression of whole bunches of wandering roses moving on the green turf.” Although the Rose Starling also loves fruit-berries and causes such damage to them by its great numbers, that in some parts it is called the “devil’s bird”--the fact remains that its chief food is the grasshopper. In Tartary, its native land, it destroys the locusts which in former times visited Hungary. A Turkish proverb says that the Rose Starling kills ninety-nine grasshoppers before it eats one. When a flight of these birds descends upon a grasshopper infested district, it consumes an enormous number of these insects, and that, in places where human defences can do nothing; in this consists the value of its actions. Among the grasshoppers found in Hungary at the present time are the _Stauronatus maroccanus_ and in smaller numbers the _Colopterus italicus_, the latter of which belongs naturally to the Hungarian fauna.