When flocked, these birds have favourite roosting places, to which they resort in tens of thousands every night with the utmost regularity. Sometimes they select a reed bed to sleep in, and do great damage by too many birds alighting on the same stems and breaking them down. Before finally settling for the night, they perform a great number of wonderful aërial evolutions, especially during fine weather. Whilst sitting in one black mass on every available branch and bough, producing an indescribable din by all chissicking and chattering to each other at the same time, they will suddenly become quite silent, and leaping into the air with a noise just like that of a truck-load of small coals being shot into the hold of a steamer, mount to a considerable height, and commence to wheel and turn as if by some magically communicated command. At one moment they look like a thick black cloud, and at another like a long trail of grey smoke. Every turn and twist, opening and closing of the whole flock, is performed with a grace and precision of movement which is wonderful to behold. Starlings nest in holes in trees, rocks, and old ruins; under the roofs of houses, in the thatch of ricks and outbuildings, and sometimes under large stones on steep hillsides. I have also known them breed amongst sticks forming the base of an Osprey’s eyrie which was occupied by young ones. A year or two ago I found an open-topped nest containing chicks in an evergreen, where a Blackbird or Thrush might have been expected to breed. Green Woodpeckers are constantly turned out of their laboriously dug holes by members of this species in search of suitable nesting quarters. The nest is a loosely-put-together structure composed of straws, rootlets, and bits of moss, with a lining of hair, feathers, and occasionally a lock of wool. I have often found nests, however, with no kind of lining at all except straws. The eggs number from four to six, of a uniform pale blue colour. This species has a curious habit of dropping its eggs about on lawns and in fields during the early part of the breeding season. Young Starlings, in their first coats of feathers, are greyish-brown, and lack entirely the beautiful purple and steel-blue sheen which gives their parents such a handsome appearance when the sun is shining upon them. [Illustration: landscape with farm] =THE CHAFFINCH.= [Illustration: flowers and leaves] Youthful students of ornithology are frequently at a loss to understand why Linnæus, the great Swedish naturalist, gave this bird the somewhat odd scientific name of _cœlebs_, signifying bachelor. He did so because he noticed that in his own country the females left the males behind in winter and migrated south in search of more hospitable climes. [Illustration: CHAFFINCH ON THE NEST.]