212 Sturnidcv. 



the same root as Sturnus, which means the ' twittering bird/ 

 Though at a little distance of dull sombre dress, it will on 

 examination be found to possess a remarkably bright burnished 

 plumage, composed of long narrow silky black feathers, shining 

 with metallic tints of green, blue, and purple, and each garnished 

 with a triangular white spot at the tip. As autumn approaches 

 these birds congregate in vast multitudes in certain favoured 

 spots towards evening, arriving in flights of forty or fifty, till 

 many thousands and even millions are collected, and forming 

 quite a cloud they whirl through the air as if guided by one 

 impulse ; now ascending high, then wheeling round, descending 

 with a roar of rushing wings, till they almost brush the earth in 

 their rapid course, and finally down they glide into the planta- 

 tion or reed-bed which they have selected for their roosting- 

 place. And then such a hubbub of voices ensues, such chattering 

 and such scolding, each apparently anxious to secure the best 

 berth for the night ; but if a gun should chance to be fired, or 

 anything else occur to startle them, away goes the whole flock in 

 a dense cloud, with a roar which would astonish those who have 

 not previously seen and heard them. Such a roosting-place exists 

 on the Lavington Downs, at New Copse ; and here I am informed 

 by Mr. Stratton, of Gore Cross, that these birds flock in thousands 

 and tens of thousands, and he adds that it is curious to observe 

 their tactics when a hawk appears for as the hawk prepares for 

 the fatal pounce, they collect into balls or compact flocks, and so 

 baffle their enemy, which immediately ascends higher for another 

 swoop, meanwhile the Starlings hurry along towards some place 

 of shelter, but ball again as the hawk prepares to make a second 

 dash. Another favoured haunt of the Starlings is a wood in the 

 parish of Nettleton, near Chippenham, where, I am informed, 

 * one thousand were killed a few years since by thirty discharges 

 from a single-barrelled gun at one time ' a piece of wanton 

 cruelty only outdone by the massacre which Colonel Hawker 

 records, how he slew many hundreds of Starlings at a single shot 

 from his long gun in the reeds near Lymington, in Hampshire. 

 In the fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire this habit of 



