In the Neighbourhood of Salisbury. 



297 



* off his head 99 with enthusiastic rapture ! They are wonderful 

 imitators of other birds, one of their notes being exactly like the call 

 of a young' Brown Owl, which so took me in one day that I spent 

 some time hunting in an old ivy bush to discover the nest of the 

 latter bird. There is a great Starling roost in Odstock Copse, the 

 next parish to ours, where in the winter thousands on thousands 

 congregate together. The first time that I noticed them they were 

 about a mile off from me, and I could not imagine what they were. 

 Every now and then, as they performed their evolutions round and 

 round the copse, ere they settled for the night, they appeared in the 

 distance like a cloud of smoke, and then turning simultaneously they 

 seemed to disappear altogether. Then as suddenly they would divide 

 into two bodies, and wheel round, and charge each other, and amal- 

 gamate into one again, with all the precision of troops on review. 

 I have spent many a half-hour in watching them since. And then, 

 their noise on finally alighting for the evening ! It is something 

 beyond description ! It is a perfect babel, in which each bird seems 

 determined to have his say, and recount the occurrences of the day, 

 and what he has done and seen, ere he retires to rest. 



Pastor Rosens. " The Rose coloured Pastor. This beautiful bird 

 is but a rare straggler amongst us, and he is a fortunate man who 

 has a British-killed specimen in his collection. The only Wilts 

 specimen which I know of is the one in the Rev. G. Powell's 

 collection, of Sutton Veney. It was killed many years back on 

 Salisbury Plain, by a shepherd -lad, who managed to preserve it after 

 a fashion by peppering it, and so, as it were, embalming the body. 

 It came eventually into Mr. Powell's posession, and was re-stuffed by 

 King some seventeen years ago. A beautiful bird of this species 

 was killed by Mr. Saunders, near Wallingford, in 1873, and was 

 preserved by Harbor, of Reading, who informed me of the occurrence. 

 And another fine bird was shot by Mr. W. Hart, the father of 

 the present naturalist at Christchurch, in an apple tree in his own 

 orchard. A very curious coincidence happened in Sarum about the 

 time I first came to reside in these parts, in 1802. The Rev. A. 

 Earle, now Archdeacon of Totness, was then Curate of St. Edmund's, 

 Salisbury, and he told me that there was a very curious bird, mating 



