280 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE
after a night, usually wet and cold, of from sixteen to eighteen hours and only about six to feed in, they must be in a half-starved state and frantic to find something to swallow. No sooner do they alight than they begin running about, prodding with their beaks, and all the time advancing, the birds keeping pretty well abreast. Now, from time to time you will notice that a bird finds something to delay him and is left behind by the others. On they go--prod, prod, then a little run, then prod, prod again and run again--while he, excited over his find, and vigorously digging at the roots of the grass, lets them go on without him until he is yards behind. Whenever this happens you will see one of the advancing birds pause in its prodding to look back from time to time as if anxious about the one left behind; and by and by this same bird, its anxiety increasing, will suddenly spring into the air and fly back to place itself at the side of the other, to wait quietly until it has finished its task; and no sooner does the busy one put up its head to signal that he is ready than up they spring and fly together on to the flock. No one witnessing this action can doubt for a moment that these two are mates,
BIRDS IN CORNISH VILLAGE 281
and that wherever they paired and bred originally
--in Lincoln or York or Thurso or perhaps in one of the western islands--they paired for life and will stick together, summer and winter and in all their wanderings, as long as they live.
Until one observes starlings in this close way, even to their minutest actions--I had indeed little else to do during my three winter months in this nursing-home--it is only natural to believe that among gregarious species the starling is one of those least likely to pair for life, seeing that in it the gregarious instinct is intensified and more highly developed than in most others. One would suppose that the flock, which is like an organism
--that is to say, the attachment to the flock
--would, out of the breeding season, take the place of the close relation or companionship between bird and bird seen in species known to pair for life. Only the pairing passion, one would suppose, could serve to dissolve the company of birds and this only for a brief season of about a couple of months' duration. There is but one brood raised in the season, and the whole business of reproduction is well over before the end of June. Later breeders are those that have lost