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Updated: June 17, 2025
"The poor thing has made the question a matter of conscience for the last fortnight," he said, "and worried herself into many a sleepless night over that picture. `Shall I sell it, or shall I not? `Yes, says poverty `sell it, and show a brave front to your creditors. `Yes, say Martin's debts, clamouring about her with open mouths, like a nest of young starlings, `sell it, and satisfy us. `No, says pride, `don't sell it; it is a patent of respectability to have an oil-painting in the house. `No, says family affection, and the queer little piping voice of her own childhood `don't sell it.
The call of the field-lark came continually out of the grass, where now and then could be seen his yellow breast; the orchard oriole was executing his fantasias in every tree; a covey of partridges ran across the path close under the horse's feet, and stopped to look back almost within reach of the riding-whip; clouds of starlings, in their odd, irresolute way, rose from the high bulrushes and settled again, without discernible cause; little wandering companies of sparrows undulated from hedge to hedge; a great rabbit-hawk sat alone in the top of a lofty pecan-tree; that petted rowdy, the mocking-bird, dropped down into the path to offer fight to the horse, and, failing in that, flew up again and drove a crow into ignominious retirement beyond the plain; from a place of flags and reeds a white crane shot upward, turned, and then, with the slow and stately beat peculiar to her wing, sped away until, against the tallest cypress of the distant forest, she became a tiny white speck on its black, and suddenly disappeared, like one flake of snow.
The blackbirds and starlings perched upon the willows seemed swollen into feathery balls, the fur started on the backs of hares, and a four-horse wain could travel in safety over swamps where at any other time a schoolboy dared not set his foot. On such an eve, with snow threatening, the great marsh was utterly desolate, and this was why these two had chosen it for their meeting place.
Hundreds of starlings were chattering in the fir-trees, and flying round the branches with incessant motion. In the thick hedge which enclosed it there were crowds of greenfinches, goldfinches, chaffinches, yellow-hammers, and sparrows, who never ceased talking.
Their orders were written upon the air; their leaders were as intangible as the shadows of their wings. The same is true of all our flocking birds; a flock of snow buntings, or of starlings, or of blackbirds, will act as one body, performing their evolutions in the air with astonishing precision.
The Gryffons were falling into the distance. Their cries were getting fainter. Now they looked like a flock of starlings ... now like a cluster of flies ... now like gnats. And then they had faded out of sight, and David and the Phoenix were streaking over the grassland alone. Ten minutes later they reached a shore and landed. They flopped on the sand, panting.
I chose three small rooms with windows looking on to the garden, and from early morning till late at night I was at work in them, glazing the windows, hanging paper, blocking up the chinks and holes in the floor. It was an easy, pleasant job. Every now and then I would run to the river to see if the ice was breaking and all the while I dreamed of the starlings returning.
And one, two, three! there they stood in their newly-ironed white collars, and looked so fresh and so pretty that the Starlings sang their prettiest songs out of sheer joy in them. "Ah, how sweet it is here!" said the Anemones. "How warm the sun is, and how the birds sing! It is a thousand times better than last year." But they said the same thing every year, so one needn't take any account of it.
The war began in this way: At the time of the vintage, the shepherds of Grangousier's country were set to guard the vines and hinder the starlings from eating the grapes. Seeing some cake-bakers of Lerné passing down the highway with ten or twelve loads of cakes, the shepherds courteously asked them to sell some of their wares at the market price.
It is appropriate that this eulogy of the starling should appear in a Newcastle paper, for Bewick when residing there always regretted the absence of these birds from the town, and hoped that they might in time become numerous, as in the South and West. Starlings are such intelligent, interesting, and really remarkable birds that if they were rare they would be among the most prized of pets.
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