242 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE


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 mass 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 in-
dividual voices, it must seem incredible that all these
birds can keep in pairs. For how could any couple
hold together in such circumstances, or when
Separated ever meet again in such a multitude, 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 wander-
ing life. Those in the north migrate or drift south,
and vast numbers, as we see, spend the winter in


DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE? 243


the southern counties. And here they have their
favourite roosting-places and are accustomed to
assemble in tens and hundreds of thousands. But
the original small flock composed of a few pairs
is never broken up—never absorbed by the multitude.
