Sir, – On Tuesday evening for a good few minutes I had the peaceful pleasure of seeing and hearing a starling who was perched on a cowl of our house. It made a variety of movements, calls and sounds, impressive among which was the sound of a tractor that had just passed. I looked it up later to find that starlings can mimic the calls of 20 other birds and that some of them can mimic cats and engines. Forget the cuckoo. – Yours, etc,
Dr JAMES FINNEGAN,
Letterkenny,
Co Donegal.