284 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



The breeding season over, the birds in each 

 locality unite in a small flock composed of twenty 

 or thirty to fifty or more pairs and start their 

 wandering life. Those in the north migrate or 

 drift south, and vast numbers, as we see, spend 

 the winter in the southern counties. And here 

 they have their favourite roosting-places and are 

 accustomed to assemble in tens and hundreds of 

 thousands. But the original small flock composed 

 of a few pairs, is never broken up — never ab- 

 sorbed by the multitude. Each morning when it 

 is light enough, the birds quit the roosting-wood, 

 but not all together; they quit it in flocks, flock 

 following flock so closely as to appear like a con- 

 tinuous stream of birds, and the streams flow out 

 in different directions over the surrounding coun- 

 try. Each stream of birds is composed of scores 

 and hundreds of units, and each unit drops out of 

 the stream and slopes away to this or that side, 

 to drop down on its own chosen feeding-ground, 

 to which it returns morning after morning through 

 the winter. When all the units have dropped out 

 and settled on their feeding areas for the day, it 

 may be seen that the whole country within a circuit 

 of ten or twelve or more miles from the roosting- 



