THE ROSE-COLOURED STARLING 137 



disperse over the countryside, in their daily search for food. 1 When 

 in pursuit of wandering swarms of locusts, this habit of daily dispersal 

 would of necessity be abandoned, the birds roosting, presumably, in 

 any convenient cover. 



Unlike the starling, the rosy-pastor is habitually gregarious 

 throughout the year. There is evidence, indeed, to show that even in 

 the breeding season, the gregarious instinct makes itself so strongly 

 felt that the cocks will leave the hens to sit on the nest at night and 

 themselves go to a common roost. This was the case in a large colony 

 which, in the year 1875, took up its summer abode at Villafranca, in 

 Italy. Nearly all the males left their nests in the evening to pass the 

 night in high trees at a distance of some miles from the town, a fact 

 of which the Italian birdcatchers promptly took advantage, and to 

 such an extent that the unfortunate male pastors were reduced to 

 a mere remnant, an act of brutality which left the widowed hens 

 burdened with the heavy task of bringing up their young unaided. 2 



The sudden and unexpected arrival of some thousands of rosy- 

 pastors at Villafranca provides a good instance of the erratic nature 

 of the movements of this species, which appears to be in the habit of 

 frequently shifting its breeding-place in order to prey upon wandering 

 swarms of locusts. Previous to 1875, the occurrences of rosy-pastor 

 during the breeding season in Italy were exceptional and unimpor- 

 tant; and, indeed, at any season irregular and infrequent. But in 

 June of that year these birds appeared one day in many thousands 

 in the province of Verona, the vast majority invading Villafranca, 

 where they alighted in chattering multitudes upon the walls of the 

 old castle, to the intense astonishment of the citizens, who were 

 greatly disappointed when, towards dusk, these beautiful and un- 

 known, if noisy, visitors departed to disperse over the country. Next 

 day, however, some twelve to fourteen thousand were again seen upon 

 the castle, where, after a fierce contest with its usual feathered 



1 Petenyi, Ornithologiache Fragmente ; Naumann, Vogel Mitteleuropas, iv. p. 22. 



2 Zoologist, 1878, p. 20 (E. de Betta). 



VOL. II. S 



