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C. J. Cornish - The Naturalist on the Thames
"Psittacus, Eois quamvis tibi missus ab oris
Jussa loquar; vincit me sturnus garrulus Indis."
The mynahs have also the starling's habit of building in houses, and especially in temples. There is a
finish about the mynah's and the starling's mimicry which certainly beats that of the parrots.
In their attendance on sheep and cattle the starlings have another creditable affinity. They are very like
the famous rhinoceros-birds of Africa, to which also they are related. The rhinoceros-birds always keep
in small flocks, every member of which sits on the back of the animal, whether antelope, buffalo, or
rhinoceros, on which it is catching insects. The starlings do not keep so closely to the animal's body,
though they frequently alight on the back of a sheep or cow and run all over it. But when seeking insect
food among cattle the little groups of starlings generally keep in a pack and attend to a single animal. Mr.
J.G. Millais, watching deer in a park with his glasses, saw a starling remove a fly from the corner of a
deer's eye. When they have run round it, and over it, and caught all the flies they can there, they rise with
a little unanimous exclamation, and fly on to the next beast. Their winter movements are also interesting.
By day they associate with other birds, mainly with rooks. Gilbert White thought they did this because
the rooks had extra nerves in their beaks, and were able to act as guides to the smaller birds searching for
invisible food. Probably it is only due to the sociable instinct. Towards night they nearly always repair in
innumerable flocks to some favourite roosting-place, either a reed-bed or a wood of evergreens, where
they assemble in thousands. One of these communal sleeping-places is the duck island in St. James's
Park. In hard weather they feed on the saltings and round the shore, especially where rotten seaweed
abounds, with great quantities of insect life in it. At such times they roost in the crevices of the great sea
cliffs. Under Culver Cliff, for instance, they may be seen flying along the shore and coming in to bed in
the frost fog with the cormorants and other fishers of the deep.
FLOWERS OF THE GRASS FIELDS
Just before hay-time, the crowning glory of the Thames-side flats is given by the flowers growing in the
grass. Their setting, among the uncounted millions of green grass stems, appeals not only by the contrast
of colour, but by the sense of coolness and content which these sheltered and softly bedded blossoms
suggest. The meadows which they adorn are best-loved of all the fields of England; but they would never
be as dear to Englishmen as they are were it not for the flowers which deck them. The blossoms and
plants found in the tall grasses differ from those on lawns and grazing pastures. They are taller, more
delicate, and of a more graceful growth. The daisy, so dear to pastoral poets, is not a flower of the
hayfield. The myriads of springing stems choke the daisy flowers, which love to lie low, on their flat and
shallow-rooted stars of leaves. The daisy is a lawn plant that loves low turf, and only in early spring on
the pasture-fields does it whiten the unmown grasses. The turf glades of the New Forest, grazed short by
cattle for eight hundred years, are very properly called "lawns"; and on these the daisies grow in
thousands, showing that they are true lawns, and not grassfields mown yearly by the scythe. What makes
a flower of the grasses it is difficult to say. Bulbs flourish among them, and clovers, trefoils, and vetch.
White ox-eye daisies love the grass, and many orchids, and in shady places white cow-parsley, and blue
wild geraniums, and all the buttercups. Others, like the yellow snapdragon and the scarlet poppy, will
have none of it, but love a dry and dusty fallow or a cornfield that has run to waste, shimmering with heat
and drought. Up the valley of the Pang, you may see acres of poppies on a fallow as scarlet as a
field-marshal's coat, and not one in the meadows by the stream. Even before the sheltering grass stems
shoot upward and around them, drawing all the flower-life skywards as trees draw other trees upright
towards the light, there are plants which are found only growing in the meadows, springing from the turf
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