STARLINGS. 215 



strength being matured, old and young collect on the tower, 

 and then wheel away over the neighbouring fields, as if 

 practising for future and more important evolutions. But 

 still the evening finds them roosting near the place of their 

 birth. At last, however, a day comes when all is hushed. 

 No hungry guests are feasting on the lawn, no clamorous 

 throats are calling aloud for food, no twitterings are heard 

 from bough or battlement, not even a straggler is to be seen 

 on the pinnacle of the weather-cock. 



The joyous assembly is broken up. The Starlings are 

 gone,* and till the Autumn, with scarcely an exception, we 

 shall see them no more. Then, about the third week in 

 September, again on their favourite perch, the weather-cock, 

 one, or two, or three, may chance to appear towards evening, 

 not with the merry note of Spring, but uttering that mono- 

 tonous, plaintive, long-drawn, whistling cry, as cheerless as 

 the cheerless season for which they seem to bid us prepare. 

 That these, and the few other stragglers occasionally occupying 

 the same post, are our Spring friends is most probable ; for a 

 lame Starling was observed for eight years to return to the 

 same nest, and every observation we have made tends to prove 

 that this is a general instinctive custom of, we believe, every 

 bird whatever. 



Having thus given some report of our Starlings for the 

 greater part of the year, we will endeavour to follow the main 

 body for the remaining months, as yet unaccounted for. To 

 do this effectually would be no easy matter, as we believe 

 that they are partially migratory, i. e., quitting one part of 

 the kingdom for another more fitted for their usual mode of 

 life ; nevertheless, enough remain within the sphere of our 

 observation, and are to be met with in little flocks during the 

 Summer in favourite meadows, where food is plentiful, asso- 

 ciating with their old friends, the Crows, Rooks, and Jackdaws. 



* The abandonment of their breeding-place depends, of course, upon 

 the season. In 1833, the month of May having been remarkably warm, 

 it occurred on the sixth of June ; but we have known it to be delayed 

 till the second week in July ; the whole of June having been very 

 unseasonable and stormy. 



