It is a lively singer, with almost unrivalled powers of imitation, and has, I must confess, completely deceived me on several occasions. One fine spring morning, whilst on my way to a railway station in the north of London, I heard, to my surprise, the familiar notes of a Golden Plover, and immediately began to examine the heavens for a member of that species flying overhead. To my surprise, I discovered that the sounds were coming from a Starling delightedly flapping its wings on a chimney-pot not far away. On another occasion, whilst hunting for a much-desired Sandpiper’s nest on the shores of a small loch in the Outer Hebrides, I said to my brother, “Hark! I hear one calling!” But that Sandpiper proved to be a Starling standing on a rock not far off imitating to perfection the soft call notes of the little wader. I have heard different members of this species mimicking the cries and call notes of the Curlew, Whimbrel, Lapwing, Common Partridge, Redshank, Ringed Plover, House Sparrow, and other small birds. Tame Starlings have been taught to imitate the human voice so well that one has been said to repeat the Lord’s Prayer from beginning to end, and Pliny, the historian, mentions one that was able to speak in both Greek and Latin. The harsh alarm cry of the species sounds something like the word _spate, spate_. [Illustration: YOUNG STARLING IN ITS FIRST COAT OF FEATHERS] Although sometimes guilty, especially during very dry seasons, of taking cherries and other fruit, the damage wrought in this way is as nothing compared with the vast amount of good done by this species in the destruction of insects injurious to growing crops. It is an amusing sight to watch a flock hurrying and scurrying across a field, the hindmost members continually flying over the foremost and then running in breathless haste looking eagerly this way and that, probing every likely and unlikely place for some lurking grub, as if life did not contain one moment to be wasted. They alight on the backs of sheep and cattle in order to destroy troublesome parasites, and at certain seasons of the year may be seen dexterously hawking winged insects over houses and tree-tops. Starlings have greatly increased in numbers during the last forty years in our islands, and there is no season of the year when flocks, great or small, cannot be seen. Late breeders keep together until far on in May, and the broods of those that commenced housekeeping operations early in April flock together directly they meet each other in the fields. Thus I have known the same nesting hole occupied twice in one season, a fact which has given rise to the belief entertained by some people that the species is double-brooded. [Illustration: ADULT STARLING IN WINTER.]