rees. But on approaching the spot, I
found the noise was nothing more nor less than the chattering and
clattering of an immense concourse of starlings. The roar of their wings
when they were disturbed in the trees could be heard half a mile away.
Although a few starlings remain round the eaves of the houses throughout
the winter, vast flocks of them assemble at this time in the fields, and
some doubtless travel southwards and westwards in search of warmer
quarters. The other evening a large flock of lapwings, or common plover,
gave a very fine display--a sort of serpentine dance to the tune of the
setting sun, all for my edification. They could not quite make up their
minds to settle on a brown ploughed field. No sooner had they touched
the ground than they would rise again with shrill cries, flash here and
flash there, faster and faster, but all in perfect time and all in
perfect order--now flying in long drawn out lines, now in battalions;
bowing here, bowing there; now they would "right about turn" and curtsey
to the sun. A thousand trained ballet dancer; could not have been in
better time. It was as if all joined hands, dressed in green and white;
for at every turn a thousand white breasts gleamed in the purple sunset.
The restless call of the birds added a peculiar charm to the scene in
the darkening twilight.

Of our winter visitants that come to take the place of the summer
migrants the fieldfare is the commonest and most familiar. Ere the leaf
is off the ash and the beeches are tinged with russet and gold, flocks
of these handsome birds leave their homes in the ice-bound north, and
fly southwards to England and the sunny shores of France. Such a
_rara avis_ as the grey phalarope--a wading bird like the
sandpiper--occasionally finds its way to the Cotswolds. Wild geese,
curlews, and wimbrels with sharp, snipe-like beaks, are shot
occasionally by the farmers. A few woodcocks, snipe, and wildfowl also
visit us. In the winter the short-eared owls come; they are rarer than
their long-eared relatives, who stay with us all the year. The common
barn owl, of a white, creamy colour, is the screech owl that we hear on
summer nights. Brown owls are the ones that hoot; they do not screech.

Curiously enough I missed the corncrake's well-known call in the meadows
by the river in the springtime of 1897; and not one was bagged in
September by the partridge-shooters. This is the first year they have
been absent. I always looked