I find the following entry in my diary for November 9th, 1895:--"A small flight of birds passed along the trees in front of the window. Caught a momentary glance of one as it rested on the tree, and noticed shades of brown and pink and the peculiar bill. Could they have been crossbills?" Yellow-hammers, or "goldfinches" as they are called here, are often to be seen in the fields near, but in the garden we are more familiar with the black-headed reed-bunting. We generally have one or two about the old bed of the river. I have watched the bird through a telescope on a July day, as he sat on an osier twig that was swaying in the wind, preening his feathers and uttering his short melody (?) betweenwhiles. He would begin as though he had really something to sing, then would come two halting notes, indicating doubt of his power to do much after all, which would immediately become a certainty, and his brief attempt would end in a fizzle. He would, however, be perfectly satisfied with the performance himself, and would go through it again and again almost as persistently as the yellow-hammer repeats his wearisome monotonous phrase. In the spring he has a still simpler song, if it can be called a song, consisting of two or three notes of one tone, something like the cheep of a chicken, sometimes repeated _ad infinitum_, sometimes followed by a short run of three or four notes more. We have starlings with us all the year round, and I am glad of it. Here at any rate they do nothing but good, and they are, besides, handsome, and are interesting to watch, while their song, whether a chorus or a solo, is always cheerful. Cold and bad weather doesn't seem to affect their spirits. On Christmas morning, in 1897, although there was a hard frost, starlings were singing away merrily, one of them imitating a blackbird's note exactly. At one time flocks of starlings used to come on autumn evenings to roost in the garden. I have watched one detachment after another arrive until the trees and evergreens were crowded with them. They did not come so much later on when the leaves had fallen, and now that the shrubbery has been thinned they do not come at all in any numbers. In spring I have heard 30 or more all singing together in this same shrubbery as late as April 2nd. Starlings hunt for their food in a methodical, business-like way. They do not seem to have the peculiar gift by which thrushes hit on the exact spot where a worm is (I fancy they do not feed much on worms) but they go diligently over every square inch of ground in their search, probing the turf with their bills widely open, so widely that one can hardly see how they can close them on a grub when they find one.