Birds by Land and Sea 



increased in number in the newly ploughed lands, 

 or in wandering parties on the wing. The yellow 

 wagtail left us, but his pied relative remained, follow- 

 ing his switchback flight through the air. Of two 

 birds so closely allied in form and habit, why should 

 the one leave us and the other stay ? It is as though 

 the swallow should migrate and the martin remain. 

 But both swallow and martin departed, the former 

 having been last seen on the 4th October, the latter 

 on the 1 9th October. 



The tendency to congregate now that all breeding 

 was over was everywhere evident ; in the banded 

 pipits, which one moment fared regularly on 

 together, and the next were scattered as by sudden 

 explosion, to regather farther on, and continue like 

 loosely associated elements charged with disruption ; 

 in the chaffinches, whose groups exhibited the as yet 

 unexplained separation of the sexes which obtains 

 under these circumstances ; in the linnets, which 

 toured the country in high, erratic flight, leaving an 

 impression that they were not particular whither 

 they went, so long as they did not remain too long 

 in one place. 



And the starlings surely the drollest creatures 

 that ever bore wings ! How they love a throng, 

 with plenty of jostling on the ground, and sparring 

 in the air. If the starling has no voice of his own, 

 he seems to have borrowed half a dozen or more 

 from various sections of the animal kingdom. Now 

 he clucks like a diminutive hen ; now emits the 



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