A thrush is making music on a tall tree beyond the garden hedge, and I am more grateful for the distance that divides us than for the song; for, just now, he does not sing so well as sometimes of an evening, when he is most fluent, and a listener, deceived by his sweetness and melody, writes to the papers to say that he has heard the nightingale. Just now his song is sc.r.a.ppy, composed of phrases that follow no order and do not fit or harmonize, and is like a poor imitation of an inferior mocking-bird"s song.
Between the sc.r.a.ps of loud thrush-music I listen to catch the thin, somewhat reedy sound of a yellow-hammer singing in the middle of the adjoining gra.s.sy field. It comes well from the open expanse of purpling gra.s.s, and reminds me of a favourite gra.s.shopper in a distant sunny land. O happy gra.s.shopper! singing all day in the trees and tall herbage, in a country where every village urchin is not sent afield to "study natural history" with green net and a good store of pins, shall I ever again hear thy breezy music, and see thee among the green leaves, beautiful with steel-blue and creamy-white body, and dim purple over and vivid red underwings?
The bird of the pasture-land is singing still, perhaps, but all at once I have ceased to hear him, for something has come to lift me above his low gra.s.sy level, something faint and at first only the suspicion of a sound; then a silvery lisping, far off and aerial, touching the sense as lightly as the wind-borne down of dandelion.
If any place for any soul there be Disrobed and disentrammelled, doubtless it is from such a place and such a soul that this sublimated music falls. The singer, one can imagine, has never known or has forgotten earth; and if it is visible to him, how small it must seem from that alt.i.tude, "spinning like a fretful midge" beneath him in the vast void!
It is the lark singing in the blue infinite heaven, at this distance with something ethereal and heavenly in his voice; but now the wide circling wings that brought him for a few moments within hearing, have borne him beyond it again; and missing it, the sunshine looks less brilliant than before, and all other bird-voices seem by comparison dull and of the earth.
Certainly there is nothing spiritual in the song of the chaffinch. There he sits within sight, motionless, a little bird-shaped automaton, made to go off at intervals of twelve or thirteen seconds; but unfortunately one hears with the song the whirr and buzz of the internal machinery. It is not now as in April, when it is sufficient in a song that it shall be joyous; in the leafy month, when roses are in bloom, one grows critical, and asks for sweetness and expression, and a better art than this vigorous garden singer displays in that little double flourish with which he concludes his little hurry-scurry lyric. He has practised that same flourish for five thousand years--to be quite within the mark--and it is still far from perfect, still little better than a kind of musical sneeze. So long is art!
Perhaps in some subtle way, beyond the psychologist"s power to trace, he has become aware of my opinion of his performance--the unspoken detraction which yet affects its object; and, feeling hurt in his fringilline _amour propre_, he has all at once taken himself off. Never mind; a better singer has succeeded him. I have heard and seen the little wren a dozen times to-day; now he has come to the upper part of the tree I am lying under, and although so near his voice sounds scarcely louder than before. This is also a lyric, but of another kind.
It is not plaintive, nor pa.s.sionate; nor is it so spontaneous as the warbling of the robin--that most perfect feathered impressionist; nor is it endeared to me by early a.s.sociations since I listened in boyhood to the songs of other wrens. In what, then, does its charm consist? I do not know. Certainly it is delicate, and may even be described as brilliant, in its limited way perfect, and to other greater songs like the small pimpernel to a poppy or a hollyhock. Unambitious, yet finished, it has the charm of distinction. The wren is the least self-conscious of our singers. Somewhere among the higher green translucent leaves the little brown barred thing is quietly sitting, busy for the nonce about nothing, dreaming his summer dream, and unknowingly telling it aloud. When shall we have symbols to express as perfectly our summer-feeling--our dream?
That small song has served to remind me of two small books I brought into the garden to read--the works of two modern minor poets whose "wren-like warblings," I imagined, would suit my mood and the genial morning better than the stirring or subtle thoughts of greater singers.
Possibly in that I was mistaken; for there until now lie the books neglected on a lawn chair within reach of my hand. The chair was dragged hither half-an-hour ago by a maiden all in white, who appeared half inclined to share the mulberry shade with me. She did not continue long in that mind. In a lively manner, she began speaking of some trivial thing; but after a very few moments all interest in the subject evaporated, and she sat humming some idle air, tapping the turf with her fantastic shoe. Presently she picked up one of my books, opened it at random and read a line or two, her vermilion under-lip curling slightly; then threw it down again, and glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes; then hummed again, and finally became silent, and sat bending forward a little, her dark l.u.s.trous eyes gazing with strange intentness through the slight screen of foliage into the vacant s.p.a.ce beyond. What to see? The poet has omitted to tell us to what the maiden"s fancy lightly turns in spring. Doubtless it turns to thoughts of something real. Life is real; so is pa.s.sion--the quickening of the blood, the wild pulsation. But the pleasures and pains of the printed book are not real, and are to reality like j.a.panese flowers made of coloured bits of tissue paper to the living fragrant flowers that bloom to-day and perish to-morrow; they are a simulacrum, a mockery, and present to us a pale phantasmagoric world, peopled with bloodless men and women that chatter meaningless things and laugh without joy. The feeling of unreality affects us all at times, but in very different degrees. And perhaps I was too long a doer, herding too much with narrow foreheads, drinking too deeply of the sweet and bitter cup, to experience that pure unfailing delight in literature which some have. Its charm, I fancy, is greatest to those in whom the natural man, deprived in early life of his proper aliment, grows sickly and pale, and perishes at last of inanition. There is ample room then for the latter higher growth--the unnatural cultivated man. Lovers of literature are accustomed to say that they find certain works "helpful" to them; and doubtless, being all intellect, they are right. But we, the less highly developed, are compounded of two natures, and while this spiritual pabulum sustains one, the other and larger nature is starved; for the larger nature is earthly, and draws its sustenance from the earth. I must look at a leaf, or smell the sod, or touch a rough pebble, or hear some natural sound, if only the chirp of a cricket, or feel the sun or wind or rain on my face. The book itself may spoil the pleasure it was designed to give me, and instead of satisfying my hunger, increase it until the craving and sensation of emptiness becomes intolerable. Not any day spent in a library would I live again, but rather some lurid day of labour and anxiety, of strife, or peril, or pa.s.sion.
Occupied with this profound question, I scarcely noticed when my shade-sharer, with whom I sympathised only too keenly in her restless mood, rose and, lifting the light green curtain, pa.s.sed out into the sunshine and was gone. Nor did I notice when the little wren ceased singing overhead. At length recalled to myself I began to wonder at the unusual silence in the garden, until, casting my eyes on the lawn, I discovered the reason; for there, moving about in their various ways, most of the birds were collected in a loose miscellaneous flock, a kind of happy family. There were the starlings, returned from the fields, and looking like little speckled rooks; some sparrows, and a couple of robins hopping about in their wild startled manner; in strange contrast to these last appeared that little feathered clodhopper, the chaffinch, plodding over the turf as if he had hobnailed boots on his feet; last, but not least, came statuesque blackbirds and thrushes, moving, when they moved, like automata. They all appear to be finding something to eat; but I Watch the thrushes princ.i.p.ally, for these are more at home on the moist earth than the others, and have keener senses, and seek for n.o.bler game. I see one suddenly thrust his beak into the turf and draw from it a huge earthworm, a wriggling serpent, so long that although he holds his head high, a third of the pink cylindrical body still rests in its run. What will he do with it? We know how wandering Waterton treated the boa which he courageously grasped by the tail as it retreated into the bushes. Naturally, it turned on him, and, lifting high its head, came swiftly towards his face with wide-open jaws; and at this supreme moment, without releasing his hold on its tail, with his free hand he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his large felt hat and thrust it down the monster"s throat, and so saved himself.
Just as I am intently watching to see how my hatless little Waterton will deal with _his_ serpent, a startling bark, following by a canine shriek, then a yell, resound through the silent garden; and over the lawn rush those three demoniacal fox-terriers, Snap, Puzzy, and Babs, all determined to catch something. Away fly the birds, and though now high overhead, the baffled brutes continue wildly careering about the grounds, vexing the air with their frantic barkings. No more birds to-day! But now the peace-breakers have discovered me, and come tearing across the lawn, and on to the half-way chair, then to the hammock, scrambling over each other to inflict their unwelcome caresses on my hands and face.
Ah well, let them have their way and do their worst, since the birds are gone, and I shall go soon. It is a consolation to think that they are not my pets; that I shall not grieve, like their mistress, when their brief barking period is over; that I care just so much and no more for them than for any other living creature, not excepting the _fer-de-lance_, "quoiled in the path like rope in a ship," or the broad-winged vulture "scaling the heavens by invisible stairs." None are out of place where Nature placed them, nor unbeautiful; none are unlovable, since their various qualities--the rage of the one and the gentleness of the other--are but harmonious lights and shades in the ever-changing living picture that is so perfect.
BIRDS IN A CORNISH VILLAGE
I
TAKING STOCK OF THE BIRDS
Having begun, or first written, this book in one village, which was near London, I am now finishing, or re-writing, it in another in "the westest part of all the land," over three hundred miles from the first. Here I had to go over this ancient work of twenty-three years ago, which was also my first English bird book, to prepare it for a new edition; and after all necessary corrections, omissions and additions of fresh matter made in the foregoing parts, it seemed best to throw out the whole of the concluding portion, which dealt mainly with the question of bird-preservation as it presented itself at that time and is now out of date, thanks to the legislation of recent years and to the growth in this country of the feeling or desire for birds during the last two or three decades. In place of this discarded matter I propose to give here the results of recent observations on the bird life of a Cornish village.
My residence in the Cornish Village (or villages) was during May and June, 1915, and again from October of the same year to June, 1916. These were months of ill-health, so that I was prevented from pursuing my customary outdoor rambling life; but, like that poor creature the barnyard fowl that can"t use its wings, instinctively, or from old habit, I used my eyes in keeping a watch on the feathered (and flying) people about me.
The village, Lelant, is on the Hayle estuary, and to see the Atlantic one has but to walk past the grey old church at the end of the street, where the ground rises, to find oneself in a wilderness of towans, as the sand-hills are there called, clothed in their rough, grey-green marram gra.s.s and spreading on either hand round the bay of St. Ives. A beautiful sight, for the sea on a sunny day is of that marvellous blue colour seen only in Cornwall; far out on a rock on the right hand stands the shining white G.o.drevy lighthouse, and on the left, on the opposite side of the bay, the little ancient fishing-town of St. Ives.
The river or estuary, in sight of the doors and windows of the village, was haunted every day by numbers of gulls and curlews. These last numbered about one hundred and fifty birds, and were always there except at full tide, when they would fly away to the fields and moors. Of all my bird neighbours I think that these gave me most pleasure, especially at night, when lying awake I would listen by the hour to the perpetual curlew conversation going on in the dark--an endless series of clear modulated notes and trills, with a beautiful expression of wildness and freedom, a reminder of lonely seash.o.r.es and mountains and moorlands in the north country. What wonder that Stevenson, sick in his tropical island--sick for his cold grey home so many thousands of miles away, wished once more to hear the whaup crying over the graves of his forefathers, and to hear no more at all!
Of bird music by day there was little; you would hear more of it in one morning in that small rustic village in Berkshire where the first part of this book was written than in a whole summer in one of these West Cornwall villages, so few comparatively are the songsters. Nor was this scarcity in the village only; it was everywhere, as I found when able to get out for a few hours during my two spring seasons in the place. Close by were the extensive woods of Trevalloe, where I was struck by the extraordinary silence and where I listened in vain for a single note from blackcap, garden-warbler, willow-wren, wood-wren, or redstart. The thrushes, chaffinch, chiff-chaff, and greenfinch were occasionally heard; outside the wood the buntings, chats, and the skylark were few and far between.
This scarcity of small birds is, I think, due in the first place to the extraordinary abundance of the jackdaw, the diligent seeker after small birds" nests, and to the autumn and winter pastime of bush-beating to which men and boys are given in these parts, and which the Cornish authorities refuse to suppress.
After a time, when, owing to increasing debility, I was confined more and more to the village, I began to concentrate my attention on a few common species that were always present, particularly on the three commonest--rook, daw, and starling; the first two residents, the starling, a winter visitor from September to April.
In October, I started feeding the birds at the house where I was staying as a guest, throwing the sc.r.a.ps on a lawn at the back which sloped down towards the estuary. First came all the small birds in the immediate neighbourhood--robin, dunnock, wagtail, chaffinch, throstle, blackbird, and blue and ox-eye t.i.ts. Then followed troops of starlings, and soon all the rooks and daws in the village began to see what was going on and come too, and this attracted the gulls from the estuary--I wished that it had drawn the curlews; and all these big ones were so greedy and bold, so noisy and formidable-looking that the small birds were quite driven out; all except the starlings that came in hungry crowds and were determined to get their share.
At the beginning of December I had to move to a nursing-home at the Convent of the Sisters of the Cross at the adjacent village of Hayle, just across the estuary. The Convent buildings and grounds and gardens are fortunately outside the ugly village, and my room had an exceptionally big window occupying almost the whole wall on one side, with an outlook to the south over the green fields and moors towards Helston. An ideal sick-room for a man who can"t be happy without the company of birds, and here, even when lying on my bed before I was able to sit or stand by the window, a large portion of the sky, rainy or blue, was visible, and rooks and daws and gulls and troops of starlings, and the curlews from the river, were seen coming and going all day long.
But it was much better when I was able to go to the window, since now, by feeding them, I could draw the birds to me. I fed them on a green field beneath my window, where the Convent milch-cows were accustomed to graze for some hours each day. All through the winter there was gra.s.s for them, and I was glad to have them there, as the cow is my favourite beast, and it was also pleasant to see the wintering starlings consorting with them, cl.u.s.tering about their noses, just as they do in the pasture lands in summer time. But I found it best to feed the birds when the cows were not there, on account of the behaviour of one of them, a young animal who had not yet been sobered by having a calf of her own. She was a frivolous young thing and when tired of feeding, she would start teasing the old cows, pushing them with her horns, then flinging up her hind legs to challenge them to a romp. The sight of a crowd of birds under my window would bring her at a gallop to the spot to find out what all the fuss was about, and the birds would be driven off.
One morning I was at my window when the field was empty of bird and beast life with the exception of a solitary old rook, a big bird who was a constant attendant and so much bigger than most of the rooks that I had come to know it well. By and by the young cow walked into the field by herself and, after gazing all round as if surprised at finding the place so lifeless, she caught sight of and fixed her eyes on the old rook working at the turf some fifty or sixty yards away. Presently she began walking towards it, and when within about twenty yards put her head down and charged it. The rook paid no attention until she was almost on it, then rose up, emitting its angriest, most raucous screams while hovering just over her head, and having thus relieved its indignant feelings it flew heavily away to the far end of the field, and settling down began prodding away at the soil. The cow, standing still, gazed after it, and one could almost imagine her saying: "So you won"t get out of the field! Well! I"ll soon make you. I"m going to have it all to myself this morning." And at once she began rapidly walking towards the bird. But half-way to it was the post set up in the middle of the field for the cows to rub their hides, and on coming abreast of it the sight of it and its proximity suggested the delight of a rub, and turning off at right angles she walked straight to the post and began rubbing herself against it. The rook went on with its business, and after that there was no more quarrelling.
Another morning this same old rook came with his mate to the field: separating, they came down a distance of a hundred yards or more apart and began searching for grubs. By and by the old c.o.c.k discovered something particularly good and after vigorously prodding the turf for a few moments he sprang up and flew excitedly to his mate, who instantly knew what this action meant and began fluttering her wings and crying for the dainty morsel which he proceeded to deliver into her wide-open mouth. Having fed her, he flew back to the same spot and began working again.
This is a common action of the rooks, and I saw this same bird feed his mate on other occasions during the winter months, when I have no doubt that he, poor wretch, could hardly find food enough to keep himself alive during the dark season of everlasting wind and rain when the dim daylight lasted for about six hours. But I never saw a daw or starling feed his mate, or feed another daw or starling, although I watched closely every day and often for an hour at a stretch, and though I am convinced that the starling, like the rook and crow and daw, and in fact all the Corvidae, pairs for life. To this point I will return presently; let me first relate another incident about our frivolous and irresponsible young cow.
One morning when the cows were in the field, some herring-gulls drifted by and a few of them remained circling about above the field. I threw out a piece of bread, and a troop of starlings rushed to it, and one of the gulls dropped down and took possession of it, but had scarcely began tearing at it when two more gulls dropped down and the first bird, lifting his wings began screaming "Hands off!" at the others, and the others, also raising their wings, screamed their wailing screams in reply. The young cow, attracted by the noise, gazed at them for a few moments, then all at once putting her head down furiously charged them.
The three gulls rose up simultaneously and floated over her and then away, leaving her standing on the spot, shaking her head in anger and disgust at their escape. A rhinoceros charging a ball of thistledown or a soap-bubble, and causing it to float away with the wind it created, would not have been a more ludicrous spectacle.
II
DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE?
From my boyhood, when I first began to observe birds, I started with the imbibed notion that those which paired for life were the rare exceptions--the dove that rhymed with love, the eagle, and perhaps half a dozen more. Who, for instance, would imagine that the s.e.xes could be faithful in parasitical species like the cuckoo of Europe and the cow-birds of America? Yet even as a boy I made the discovery that an Argentine cow-bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other species, does actually pair for life; and so effectually mated is it, that on no day and no season of the year will you see a male without his female: if he flies she flies with him and feeds and drinks with him, and when he perches she perches at his side, and he never utters a sound but a responsive sound immediately falls from her devoted beak.
Again, it may seem unlikely that there can be pairing for life in species, like the chaffinch of northern Europe and, with us, of Scotland, in which the s.e.xes separate and migrate separately. Also of non-gregarious species like the nightingale in which the males arrive in this country several days before the females. Yet I am confident that if we could catch and mark a considerable number of pairs it would be found that the same male and female found one another and re-mated every year.
It comes to this, that birds may pair for life, yet not be all the time or all the year together, as in the case of hawks, crows, owls, herons, and many others. In numberless species which undoubtedly pair for life the s.e.xes keep apart during several hours each day, and there is some evidence that those that separate for a part of the year remain faithful.
An incident, related by Miss Ethel Williams, of Winchester, in her natural history notes contributed to a journal in that city, bears on this point. She had among the bird pensioners in the garden of her house adjoining the Cathedral green, a female thrush that grew tame enough to fly into the house and feed on the dining-room table. Her thrush paired and bred for several seasons in the garden, and the young, too, were tame and would follow their mother into the house to be fed. The male was wild and too shy ever to venture in. She noticed the first year that it had a wing-feather which stuck out, owing probably to a malformation of the socket. Each year after the breeding season the male vanished, the female remaining alone through the winter months, but in spring the male came back--the same bird with the unmistakable projecting wing-feather. Yet it was certain that this bird had gone quite away, otherwise he would have returned to the garden, where there was food in abundance during the spells of frosty weather. As he did not appear it is probable that he migrated each autumn to some warmer climate beyond the sea.
I have noticed that wagtails, thrushes, blackbirds, and some other species when the young are out of the nest, divide the brood between male and female and go different ways and spend the daylight hours at a distance apart, each attending to the one or two young birds in its charge.
One winter, a few years ago, I was staying for a few days at a cottage facing Silchester Common, and on going out after breakfast to feed the birds I particularly noticed a male grey wagtail among those that came to me, on account of its beauty and tameness. Every morning I fed it, and on my speaking to my landlady about it she said, "Oh, we know that bird well; this is the fourth winter it has spent with us, but it always came before with its mate. The poor little thing had only one leg, but managed to hop about and feed very well; this year the poor thing didn"t turn up with its mate, so we suppose it had met its death somewhere during the summer."
I have often watched the gatherings of pied wagtails (always with a certain number of the grey species among them) in places where they spend the winter in our southern counties, at some spot where they are accustomed to congregate each evening to hold a sort of frolic before going to roost, and it has always appeared to me that the birds, both pied and grey, were in pairs. So too, in watching the starlings day after day in the field in front of my window. Well able with my binocular to observe them closely, I saw much to convince me that the starling, too, lives all the year with his mate.
Each morning the birds that had made our village their daily feeding-ground, would, on arrival from the roosting-place in one body, break up into numerous small parties of half a dozen to twenty or more birds. All day long these little flocks were hurrying about from field to field, spending but a short time at one spot, so hungry were they and anxious to find a more productive one, and in every field they would meet and mix with other small groups, and presently all would fly, and breaking up into small parties again go off in different directions.
Thus one had a constant succession of little flocks in the field from morning till night, and I found from counting the birds in each small group that in three cases in four they were in even numbers. Again, I have often seen a group of three, five, seven or nine birds on the field, and after a while a solitary starling from a neighbouring field or from some treetop near by has flown down to join the group and make the numbers even.
The birds when feeding, I have said, are always in a desperate hurry, and little wonder, since after a night, usually wet and cold, of from sixteen to eighteen hours and only about six to feed in, they must be in a half-starved state and frantic to find something to swallow. No sooner do they alight than they begin running about, prodding with their beaks, and all the time advancing, the birds keeping pretty well abreast. Now, from time to time you will notice that a bird finds something to delay him and is left behind by the others. On they go--prod, prod, then a little run, then prod, prod again and run again--while he, excited over his find, and vigorously digging at the roots of the gra.s.s, lets them go on without him until he is yards behind. Whenever this happens you will see one of the advancing birds pause in its prodding to look back from time to time as if anxious about the one left behind; and by and by this same bird, its anxiety increasing, will suddenly spring into the air and fly back to place itself at the side of the other, to wait quietly until it has finished its task; and no sooner does the busy one put up its head to signal that he is ready than up they spring and fly together on to the flock. No one witnessing this action can doubt for a moment that these two are mates, and that wherever they paired and bred originally--in Lincoln or York or Thurso or perhaps in one of the western islands--they paired for life and will stick together, summer and winter and in all their wanderings, as long as they live.
Until one observes starlings in this close way, even to their minutest actions--I had indeed little else to do during my three winter months in this nursing-home--it is only natural to believe that among gregarious species the starling is one of those least likely to pair for life, seeing that in it the gregarious instinct is intensified and more highly developed than in most others. One would suppose that the flock, which is like an organism--that is to say, the attachment to the flock--would, out of the breeding season, take the place of the close relation or companionship between bird and bird seen in species known to pair for life. Only the pairing pa.s.sion, one would suppose, could serve to dissolve the company of birds and this only for a brief season of about a couple of months" duration. There is but one brood raised in the season, and the whole business of reproduction is well over before the end of June. Later breeders are those that have lost their first eggs or broods. And no sooner are the young brought off and instructed in the starling"s sole vocation (except his fruit-eating) of extracting the grubs it subsists on from the roots of the gra.s.s--a business which detains them for a week or two--than the married life is apparently over and the communal life resumed. The whole life of the bird is then changed; the sole tie appears to be that of the flock; home and young are forgotten: the birds range hither and thither about the land, and by and by migrate to distant places, some pa.s.sing oversea, while others from the northern counties and from Scotland and the islands come down to the south of England, where they winter in millions and myriads.
There they form the winter habit of congregating in immense numbers in the evening at their favourite roosting-places, and hundreds and thousands of small flocks, which during the daylight hours exist distributed over an area of hundreds of square miles all make to one point and combine into one flock. At such times they actually appear to rejoice in their own incalculable numbers and gather earlier than they need at the roosting-place, so that the whole vast gathering may spend an hour or so in their beloved aerial exercises.
To anyone who witnesses these gatherings and sees the birds rising from time to time from the wood, and appearing like a big black cloud in the sky, growing lighter and darker alternately as the birds scatter wide or ma.s.s themselves in a closer formation, until after wheeling about for some minutes they pour back into the trees; and who listens to the noise they make, as of a high wind in the wood, composed, as it is, of an infinity of individual voices, it must seem incredible that all these birds can keep in pairs. For how could any couple hold together in such circ.u.mstances, or when separated ever meet again in such a mult.i.tude, or, should they ever meet by chance, how recognize one another when all are exactly alike in size, shape, colour and voice?
They can, and certainly do, keep together, and when forced apart as, when pursued by a hawk, they scatter in all directions, they can quickly find one another again. They can do it because of their perfect discipline, or instinct, or the perfection of the system they follow during their autumn and winter wanderings and migrations.
The breeding season over, the birds in each locality unite in a small flock composed of twenty or thirty to fifty or more pairs and start their wandering life. Those in the north migrate or drift south, and vast numbers, as we see, spend the winter in the southern counties. And here they have their favourite roosting-places and are accustomed to a.s.semble in tens and hundreds of thousands. But the original small flock composed of a few pairs, is never broken up--never absorbed by the mult.i.tude. Each morning when it is light enough, the birds quit the roosting-wood, but not all together; they quit it in flocks, flock following flock so closely as to appear like a continuous stream of birds, and the streams flow out in different directions over the surrounding country. Each stream of birds is composed of scores and hundreds of units, and each unit drops out of the stream and slopes away to this or that side, to drop down on its own chosen feeding-ground, to which it returns morning after morning through the winter. When all the units have dropped out and settled on their feeding areas for the day, it may be seen that the whole country within a circuit of ten or twelve or more miles from the roosting-place has been occupied, that each flock has its own territory, where it splits up into some groups and spends its short hours flying about and exploring every green field, and one might almost say "every gra.s.s." One can only explain this perfect distribution by a.s.suming that each unit instinctively looks for unoccupied ground in its winter habitat, and that consequently there is very little overlapping. It must also be a.s.sumed that at the place of a.s.sembly in the evening each flock has its own roosting-place--its own trees and bushes where the members of the flock can still keep together and to which after each aerial performance they can return. The flock comes back to sleep on its own tree, and no doubt every couple roosts side by side on its own twig.
On the return of Spring the birds do not migrate in a body, but slip away, flock by flock, to reappear about the end of April in their old breeding-place in the North Country, with, perhaps, the loss of a few members--the one that was old and died in the season of scarcity; and one that was taken at the roost by a brown owl, and one that had its feet frozen to the perch; and was killed by a jackdaw when struggling to free itself; and one that was struck down by a sparrow-hawk on his homeward journey.