92 
Another rare visitor, the Rose-coloured Pastor, was shot by 
Mr. Hammond at St. Albans, Kent, in 1887, and another specimen 
has been obtained from Wye. The Pastor is a very beautiful bird, 
very Jay like in appearance, and like the former bird, is only an 
accidental visitor from foreign lands. With regard to the Common 
Starling, it has very much increased in Kent of late years. 
During the autumn of 1888, immense flocks of these birds were 
met with in the marshes of the Stour Valley. At sunset they 
departed in flocks towards their roosting place, a low ash wood 
near the marshes, where they alighted in such numbers that they 
bowed down the trees with their weight, and the noise they made 
might be heard nearly a mile off; they appeared to feed on the 
daddy-long-legs that were hatching out in great numbers. 
FAMILY CORVID.A.—(page 111). 
At the head of this Family stands the Chough, which appears 
in my list only on the authority of Dr. Boys, who mentions it 
among the Kent birds in his list, in the History of Sandwich. It 
must have been extinct as a Kent bird for many years. It is 
doubtful even if the bird alluded to by Shakespeare, in a well 
known passage, was the Chough; but it is not improbable that 
it survived along the inaccessible crags of the Dover Cliff; at any 
rate, it is not a little remarkable that the Arms of the See of 
Canterbury shew three Choughs. The present Archbishop 
Benson said, when he came from Cornwall, that he came from the 
home of the Chough to find him engraved on his Coat of Arms at 
Canterbury. 
The Raven is becoming almost as rare as the Chough in these 
parts ; and the Carrion Crow is scarce in the eastern parts of our 
district. The Grey Crow, or Hooded Crow, is aregular Winter 
visitor, not only a familiar bird to the visitor of the sea shore, but 
abundantly distributed in the Stour Marshes. The Rooks have of 
late taken up their abode in this Parish, why or wherefore they 
never came before, I cannot imagine, there being a toll of elm trees 
on the Glebe, next the Church, which the late Rector kept most 
carefully secluded; and he was most anxious to get a Rookery. 
However, the Rooks mever came till just after his death, a few 
years ago. With the new Rector came the Rooks, though they do 
not receive half the protection they would have formerly enjoyed. 
I have a word to say for the Magpie, so persecuted by 
sportsmen and farmers, that it is a wonder he is not exterminated. 
True, he will rob the hen of her brood, and appears insatiable in 
his appetite for a time, but it is only while rearing their young 
that they are so destructive; at other times they are great 
destroyers of mice and insects. 
