The Starling Census What has happened to the census of
starling roosts organized two years ago ? A good many observers have taken very great pains to collect facts and a great mass of it is in existence, but remains unpublished. The starling moats in London, though remarkable enough, are not so multitudinous as was thought. A Rover Scout sent me figures (previously published in The Spectator) and I learn that they agree very closely with an independent census made by Mr. Nicholson, who may be called the arch-specialist in this branch of ornithology. Fewer than five thousand to a. building as big as the British Museum is a maximum. On the other hand, some individual tree roosts exceed twenty thousand. The observer& have evidence not only of the whereabouts and extent of the roosts, but the length of the journeys made between feeding ground and roost. The starlings do not, I think, travel nearly so far as the rooks. Immense roosts like that in the woods on the Dart just above Dartmouth College must be patronized by rooks that have flown a score or two of miles. As with men, the "daily-breeders" travel further and further from the dormitory.
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