3 o2 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



manner, in the other case, the scene below tells 

 sharply on some one bird in the flock; hunger is 

 created by suggestion; the sight of feeding sheep 

 scattered about in the moist green earth is associated 

 in his starling mind with the act of satisfying his 

 want, and down to the sheep he accordingly goes 

 and carries some of the others with him. 



The action of the starlings going off with the geese 

 may perhaps be accounted for in the same way. An 

 impulse due to an associate feeling caused those thirty 

 birds to break away from the flock. These starlings 

 were probably migrants from the north of Europe 

 and were intimate with geese: they had perhaps even 

 travelled with the geese over lands already whitened 

 with snow and over the sea; they had also probably 

 fed with the geese in green meadows and fields where 

 both birds find their food in abundance. The sight 

 of the flying geese became associated in their minds 

 with some such past experience and they were in- 

 stantly carried away by an impulse to join and fly 

 with them, but only some thirty of the flock, the 

 other seventy remaining unaffected or uninfected 

 by the example. 



My best evening was on October 29, for at the 

 close of that day the sky cleared and the geese re- 

 turned, not in detachments, but all together a little 

 earlier than usual. I was out on the marsh towards 

 Blakeney, a mile and a half or so from Wells, when, 

 about half an hour before sunset, a solitary goose 

 came flying by me towards the sea, keeping only a 



