210 BIRD WATCHING 



better — for that one. Such fights as these are usually 

 between two male birds, but hen chaffinches some- 

 times fight, whilst scuffles between a cock and a hen 

 over food may also be witnessed. 



Greenfinches fight in much the same manner, but 

 they are more stoutly built, and their motions are 

 not quite so brisk and airy, though chaffinches them- 

 selves are but clumsy birds in this respect compared 

 to many others — larks, for example. They, too, fight 

 tenaciously. After a brisk partie in the air, I have 

 seen one, on their falling together, seize the other 

 by the nape and be dragged about by it over the 

 snow. 



But what has interested me more than anything 

 else in my frequent watchings of small birds con- 

 gregated together at the stacks, is the way in which 

 every few minutes or so — sometimes at longer, and 

 sometimes at shorter intervals — they take instant 

 and simultaneous flight, rising all together * with a 

 sudden whirr of wings, and flurrying away to some 

 near tree or trees, or into the hedgerow, to return 

 in a much more scattered and gradual manner very 

 soon — sometimes almost directly afterwards. These 

 sudden spontaneous flights, where one and the same 

 thought seems suddenly to take possession of a whole 

 assembly of beings, I had before, and have often 

 afterwards, observed in rooks, starlings, wood-pigeons, 

 etc., and I have been equally puzzled to account for 

 it in all of them. I do not remember that this habit, 

 which is, indeed, common in a greater or less degree 

 to a very great number of birds, has ever been brought 



* This is the effect produced, but for greater accuracy see p. 245. 



