A DORSET DIARY 143 



their mother, whose rufous mantle their own resemble. 

 The back of the male is bluish-grey. 



October 25th. — I wandered along the stream, or rather 

 ditch, which leads through the cultivated valley to 

 the foot of the bare, rolling, down-like hills. Out of 

 a small clump of elms (what Andrew Marvell called a 

 " plume " of trees) flew no fewer than fifteen magpies 

 some thirty yards from where I stood. Among the 

 low alders, brambles, and willows growing along the 

 stream-bank I fell in with a company of travelling tits, 

 strung out in a long line, threading the bushes like rain 

 penetrating foliage, and chirping away to one another, 

 to keep the flock together. All four kinds were there 

 and half a dozen tree-creepers as well ; but not, alas ! 

 the long-tailed tit, for he wellnigh perished out of 

 England in the terrible winter of 1916-17. In some 

 places the trees were alive with the birds, and they 

 looked like a travelling circus of minute acrobats. That 

 is rather a vulgar comparison, for there was nothing 

 idle or grotesque in their antics. They were extra- 

 ordinarily engrossed and energetic little nomads, devas- 

 tating the insect world that lay in their path. A wren 

 sang in the midst of them. He, like the tits, is a 

 small workman, who suspends labour for a moment to 

 express his satisfaction in good work well accomplished. 



October 26th. — The sight to-day were the starlings. 

 A flock of about a hundred was moving to a single 

 consciousness across the grey sky. It was like a cloud 

 directed by intelligent force. It would thin out in a long 

 line, bend its extremities into a crescent, and then mould 

 itself into a ball. Then it would divide in two and wind 

 in upon itself in beautiful and orderly conformation. 

 Such manoeuvres were never seen among us earth- 

 bound men. At the same time gulls in hundreds were 

 drifting in from the sea to feed among the fallows ; 

 the rooks (the rookery hereabouts is at least three 

 hundred strong) were massed high in the distance ; 

 troops of finches dashed across the expanse, and a 

 pair of carrion crows hoarsely applauded from the 

 tops of a group of bright-berried rowans. It was both 

 an exhilarating and a restful spectacle — our English 



