414 Mr. W. Thompson on the Birds of Ireland. 



flocks consisting of from half-a-dozen to two hundred indivi- 

 duals are seen every morning coming from the north-east, 

 passing over a point of land where a river enters Belfast Bay 

 about a mile from the town, and continuing in the same course 

 until lost to view. They are generally seen only for one and 

 a half or two hours — from eight to ten o'clock a.m. — none ap- 

 pearing before the former hour, and rarely any after the latter, 

 except when the wind is high, and then the flight is protracted 

 until noon ; when very stormy they do not come at all. At 

 the season of their earliest appearance, there is daylight be- 

 tween four and five o'clock in the morning, and their not being 

 seen before eight o'clock leads to the belief that they have left 

 some distant place at an "early hour. On the same morning 

 the flocks all take the same line of flight, but the direction va- 

 ries when the wind is sufficiently strong to affect their move- 



erly in the autumnal course. When they commence migration very late in 

 the season, as was the case in 1838, they make up for lost time by an in- 

 crease of numbers. Thus they were first seen in that year on the 23rd of 

 October, when they made their appearance at half-past eight o'clock a.m., 

 and continued passing in flocks of from twenty to one and two hundred in- 

 dividuals, until two o'clock. The following day, I had the gratification of wit- 

 nessing a flock consisting of about two hundred, going through their beautiful 

 evolutions,preparatory to roosting on a bank of Arundo phragmilis at the side 

 of the river Lagan, near Stranmillis. From a great height in the air, they se- 

 veral times swept down almost vertically to the reeds, and, though the flock 

 in each instance seemed to lose some of its numbers there, the great body 

 sprang up again to a considerable altitude, and renewed its elegant man- 

 oeuvres. Every time that they descended to the reeds, it was from the high- 

 est range of flight the stoop was made : when flying over at half the elevation, 

 and they wheeled downwards, they never drooped so low as the reeds. At 

 twenty-five minutes past four o'clock they had all alighted. Concealed by a 

 high hedge, I had the opportunity of watching them from a short distance, 

 and perceived by their flitting from one part of the reeds to another, that 

 they were very restless for some time. In thus changing their quarters they 

 rarely rose above the tops of the Arundo, and when at rest were perched so 

 low down as to be invisible. After alighting they kept up a very noisy con- 

 cert, in which no sound like their whistle was heard, but rather a medley dif- 

 ferent from and more guttural than their ordinary chatter. 



I have seen small flocks of starlings on a few other occasions during the time 

 of migration roosting here, and have (different from what has just been men- 

 tioned) remarked single birds perch so high up on the reeds as to sway them 

 horizontally. These plants were always preferred here, for roosting in, to trees, 

 though these, of various size, up to the most lofty, are quite contiguous. By 

 Mr.Wm.Todhunter, late of Portumna, I have been informed, that after a hur- 

 ricane in September 1836? nearly nineteen hundred of these birds were 

 washed ashore on the banks of the Shannon. The reeds in which they placed 

 their trust were snapped asunder in consequence of their weight. Starlings 

 are stated by Mr. Todhunter to be vastly more numerous during winter than 

 summer in that quarter. This gentleman remarked that they frequented the 

 same woods for roosting-places for two or three winters only : in the course 

 of eight years, during which he lived at Portumna, they thus changed three 

 times. 



