THE STARLING. 
291 
I have been more than once entertained by witnessing starlings 
spring into the air with lapwings, so much their superiors in size, 
and guide their course ; as on the earth, the puny ass leads 
strings of camels in the East. I have thus seen twenty starlings 
lead about two hundred lapwings, backward and forward for a 
long time. 
The most interesting feature in the starling is its beautiful mode 
of flight before roosting for the night. It is very rarely that such 
a sight can be observed in the vicinity of Belfast. But on Octo- 
ber the 24th, 1838, I had the gratification of witnessing a flock 
consisting of about two hundred, going through their beautiful 
evolutions, preparatory to roosting on a bank of Arundo phragmitis 
at the side of the river Lagan, near Stranmillis. They several 
times swept down from a great height in the air, almost vertically, 
to the reeds, and, though the flock in each instance seemed to 
lose some of its numbers there, the great body sprang up again to 
a considerable altitude, and renewed its elegant manoeuvres. 
Every time they descended to the reeds, the stoop was made 
from the highest range of flight : when passing over at half that 
elevation, and they wheeled downwards, they never drooped so 
low as the reeds. At twenty-five minutes past four o’clock they 
had all alighted. Concealed by a high hedge, I had the oppor- 
tunity of watching them from a short distance, and perceived by 
their flitting from one part of the reeds to another, that they were 
very restless for some time. In thus changing their quarters they 
rarely rose above the tops of the Arundo , and when at rest, were 
perched so low down as to be invisible. After alighting, they kept 
up a very noisy concert, in which no sound like their wdiistle was 
heard, but rather a medley different from, and more guttural than, 
their ordinary chatter. 
I have seen small flocks of starlings, on a few other occasions 
during the time of migration, roosting here, and have remarked 
single birds perch so high up on the reeds, as to sway them 
horizontally. These plants were always preferred to trees for 
roosting in, though the latter of various size, up to the most lofty, 
were quite contiguous. Their apparent preference to reeds was thus 
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