BIRDS IN FLOCKS 263 



their most familiar note in the stubble-fields is the soft 

 chirrup which they utter as they flit up with their drooping 

 white-edged wings. While skylarks keep to the open field, 

 and linnets haunt both the stubble and the hedgerows, the 

 strings of wandering titmice are to be found in the hedge- 

 rows alone. It is a mistaken idea that tits never perch on 

 the ground, but at this time of year their booty is chiefly 

 to be found among the boughs of trees and shrubs, where 

 pupae of summer insects are numerous, and the kernels 

 of the seeds and berries are ripening. Mixed parties of 

 several species, sometimes accompanied by a goldcrest or 

 two, push from tree to tree through the woods with chirping 

 cries, searching the twigs and crevices in acrobatic attitudes, 

 and constantly pressing on. At the end of a wood they fol- 

 low the hedge leading down a field ; and at the corner of the 

 hedge they jerk across the open space where the larks and 

 linnets are trooping on the stubble, and twitch their way up 

 the hedge on the other side. The great contrast with the 

 ways of the same birds in the nesting-season is that there is 

 no anxious concentration about a certain point — the position 

 of the nest or the young — which was then so conspicuous. 

 The nests that held the young in May are now downbeaten 

 and neglected, or haunted only by nocturnal field-mice ; the 

 birds have no care either for them or for the wood that 

 held them, but wander as vaguely as the thistle-down in the 

 autumn air. 



In the shortening September evenings the starlings begin 

 to form their great winter congregations. Rooks are gre- 

 garious at all seasons of the year ; and starlings also nest in 

 colonies on situations such as cliff-faces or old buildings, which 

 provide them with plenty of convenient holes. But from 

 early autumn until the following nesting-season most of them 

 collect to roost in hosts which far outnumber the flocks in 



