I spoke last week of the trouble starlings are causing
to an impotent humanity. Since then I have learned that humanity is not so impotent after all. I have also learned a new word, which is always stimulating. It comes in the form of a commu- nication from De-Birding Limited, which has discovered, it seems, that if you cannot put salt on a starling's tail you can, so to speak, put electricity on its claws, a process which it dis- likes so much that it forsakes for good and all the vicinity where that experience befell it. But let me quote : " The birds are scared from the building by means of an electric impulse occurring about once a second in a single wire, which is sup- ported on neat insulators and is run along the ledge on which the birds are in the habit of perching.... News spreads rapidly in the bird world and the building is very soon shunned by all comers." The shock is not mortal, but it is distinctly unsettling; it induces insomnia; the result is that starling crieth unto starling : " My sole is troubled; come fly away and be at rest." Now I gather, Birmingham, or all that matters of it, is as com- pletely de-birded as Hamelin was de-ratted.
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