Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1920-07-29
A Mimic. A Ventriloquist, A Bird With
Brains, Is The Startling.

startling provides for himself and for
whoever will listen. In his private life
he has few graces, we are told, but
when he enters upon a concert stage
he puts on airs and pipes many diverse
parts. He is a humorist, but not an
amiable one, for he burlesques his
neighbors derisively, and, naturally,
they don't like it. Besides, his do
nestle habits are not OF the best. A
bird so deeply interested in art, and at
heart a cynic, wouldn't be expected TO
be a very good home builder, and Il is
rumored that his wife hasn't a proper
sense of responsibility toward her chill
dren. They build their nests in gar
dens and apple orchards, and even
about the tiles and chimney-pots of
human dwellings-for what is an actor
without an audience But in spite of
the starling's peculiar characteristics
the writer in the London Times seems
to like him, for he says:
The starting is the most artful and
deliberate, as we'll as the hardest and
most abundant, of our English mock
ing birds. Our other birds which in
troduce limitations into their song do
so with a kind of incoherent rapture,
which hardly suggests intention. The
sedge warbler, the wheat-ear, the
scarce and local marsh warbler, all in
varying degrees, by daylight or in dark
ness, pour forth repetitions Of other
birds songs and cries. But they sound
as if they were under the mesmeric in
huence of the authentic singers-sibyls
through whom the god spoke.
! Not so mimic the astute and civil
starting when ne settles himself upon
some housetop in the spring "--~''
| His own notes are transformations, tho
mixed and eccentric; he pipes in
| falsetto, emits a note between a croak
and a whine, clinks like a chisel work
ing on stone, and unburdens himself of
sounds like the escape of froth from a
ginger bottle. Then, having di-
verted attention from himself by these
AFFECT noises, he turns with equal col
lectedness to mimicry. With mimicry
he combines ventriloquism; he repeats
four notes of missel- thrush so &C
curately, but in so low a tone, that we
may listen to them half-unconsciously
for five minutes together, thinking they
come from two fields away. Only
when they change into the "coo-ee,
coo-ee" of the peewit, or some char
acteriStic Tilt of the blackbird, does the
common point of origin of all these
cries, and their similarity of pitch, at
last strike the ear with surprize. Then,
stepping back little, and gazing up,
we detect our mocking-b bird perched on
the roof with an air of quiet absorption
in his art; and we see his yellow beak
open, as the cry-it may be-of the
curfew seems to float into the garden
from aloft and far away.
Starlings are birds with brains we'll
developed, like their relatives the
crows; and sometimes they have long
memories. Almost "the earliest pipe
of halfawaken'd birds" on one dark
and foggy morning was the voice of
startling softly repeating outside the
window the peewit's twisting call.
Perhaps he was cheering himself in
the dismal dawn with this glad spring
sound; certainly he could not have
heard it for nearly six months pash
since the peewits ceased nesting. But
usually our household hooking bird
repeats the familiar cries of the cur
rent time and his immediate surround
ings. The mewing of diskittened and
disconsolate cat, the creaking hinge of
garden door, the calls of a nurse
girl for her Grant young-even such
unbirdlike cries as these are recorded
as having been registered and repeated
by the attentive startling. London star
lings near a hotel or theater used TO
mimic the long drawn whistling for
cab. Generally, however, they initiate
other birds; and it is often interesting
to deduce from their communications
which are the commonest bird-cries
Near the meors in the west and north
the starting copies the peewit and the
curfew; in wooded regions he is fond
OF the ringing laugh Of the green
woodpecker; near hawk-haunted
ruin we hear him repeat the kestreps
cry; and it is probable that the
starlings which sit above a reed-grown
castle moat will initiate the croakin,
call of the water-hens.
AS for his relations with his neigh.
bers, they are somewhat strained