Careless Mothers Starlings will not nest except in a hole,
and as holes arc in many places not frequent they are often in difficulties. They will enlarge nesting holes of boxes meant for tits and they will oust any hole-dwelling bird less vigorous than themselves. Even the large and very strong-billed wood- pecker goes down before their insistence. It is, I imagine, the impossibility of finding a nesting site that compels the starling to lay its eggs anywhere. This year, as almost every year, I have found odd starlings' eggs lying about lawn and bed and field, generally but not always broken. A- good many starlings must lay, but not sit. The paucity of nesting sites perhaps is not the sole reason, for there are many birds which have their troubles about nest-building, but for myself I never find mislaid eggs of any other bird than the starling thus laid in the open. It is of course not rare by the seaside to come upon broken guillemots' eggs, but they are the relic of complete eggs carried off in the beaks of marauding gulls. The starling, so far as I know, has no particular enemy. She is, it may be, an inveterate layer of a careless disposition.
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