THE FAERY YEAR 



up into neighbouring trees ; each regiment flies up 

 as one bird, murmurs that strange sing-song as one 

 bird, and flies off as one bird to the chosen reed 

 bed or plantation. It is like a march-past after 

 manoeuvres of an army dressed and drilled till it 

 moves with the precision of a machine. 



Finally, at the grand gathering -place all the 

 regiments will be thrown into one. Chaos seems to 

 prevail. But, if so, it is cosmos again in an instant ; 

 for every starling in the reed bed rising with a rush 

 of thousands of wings that are as one wing the host 

 will go through its wonderful figures in the air with 

 the rhythm of faultless order. No army of men 

 that ever took the field could surpass the leaderless 

 one of the starlings in this. 



After the starlings at eve, there seems little 

 enough of ordered array about the pheasants going 

 to roost. However many pheasants there be in a 

 wood, each one seems a free lance. A dozen may 

 go up into the same warm tree, crying loudly, but 

 each pheasant goes independently of the other. 

 There is no spirit of the flock among the pheasants, 

 though a strong desire for society by dark and by 

 day. But when we watch and listen to pheasants at 

 dusk, we find they have a distinct roosting habit or 

 etiquette of their own. The voluble cock pheasant, 

 the keeper says, will go up first, the quiet hens fol- 

 lowing a little later ; and, when a hen bungles up 

 into his tree or a neighbouring one, the cock bird 

 will often acknowledge the event by a crow. This is 

 not always the last crow of the night ; if it thunder 

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