118 THE STARLINGS 



indescribable if uttered by a hundred thousand a marvellous 

 harmony of chucklings and gurglings, of pipings, whistles and 

 wheezes, of clicks and coughs and kisses, and behind it all, 

 accompanying it like the pizzicato of violins, is the rustling and 

 fluttering of the moving myriads seeking a place for the night. If 

 in a reed-bed, every reed bends and sways beneath the weight of 

 its living burden ; if in a wood, each bough, one above the other, 

 shows its row of little close-pressed figures. Gradually the evensong 

 dies down, the rustling and fluttering ceases, or nearly so, small heads 

 and beaks, whole rows of them, thousands of them, are tucked 

 beneath the warm covering feathers, and there is silence the 

 broken silence that alone is possible in such a dormitory, where 

 boughs may jar and whimper with each gust that blows, disturbing 

 into sudden startled flight perhaps the sleeping lines of birds upon 

 them, where leaves rustle and whisper, and where all the queer mys- 

 terious little noises that haunt a wood at night come and go, to be 

 silenced suddenly by the hoot of a passing owl, or the scream of a 

 creature in pain, and then again to recommence. 



But there is another description of a starling roost, more strik- 

 ing perhaps, but less attractive. It has been left us by the late 

 Mr. Cordeaux, who one night entered a large roost of spruce and 

 larch in order, not to kill, but to scare the birds away on account 

 of the damage being done by them to the trees. The upper 

 branches were occupied by rooks and daws, the lower by crowded 

 bands of starlings, nearly all asleep, packed so close that some of 

 them on the extreme ends of the more slender boughs seemed hardly 

 to have hold for their feet. A bird here and there, alarmed by the 

 sound of human feet, stretched out its neck and peered downwards 

 into the darkness, but seeing nothing, it settled itself on its perch, and 

 soon, maybe, its " little wits were wandering in bird dreamland." A 

 hushed pause, and then the report of the gun split the silence. The 

 effects of the discharge were perfectly astounding. " I can only com- 

 pare the noise," writes Mr. Cordeaux, " to the bursting of some large 



