One morning when the cows were in the field, some herring-gulls drifted by and a few of them remained circling about above the field. I threw out a piece of bread, and a troop of starlings rushed to it, and one of the gulls dropped down and took possession of it, but had scarcely began tearing at it when two more gulls dropped down and the first bird, lifting his wings began screaming "Hands off!" at the others, and the others, also raising their wings, screamed their wailing screams in reply. The young cow, attracted by the noise, gazed at them for a few moments, then all at once putting her head down furiously charged them. The three gulls rose up simultaneously and floated over her and then away, leaving her standing on the spot, shaking her head in anger and disgust at their escape. A rhinoceros charging a ball of thistledown or a soap-bubble, and causing it to float away with the wind it created, would not have been a more ludicrous spectacle. II DO STARLINGS PAIR FOR LIFE? From my boyhood, when I first began to observe birds, I started with the imbibed notion that those which paired for life were the rare exceptions--the dove that rhymed with love, the eagle, and perhaps half a dozen more. Who, for instance, would imagine that the sexes could be faithful in parasitical species like the cuckoo of Europe and the cow-birds of America? Yet even as a boy I made the discovery that an Argentine cow-bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other species, does actually pair for life; and so effectually mated is it, that on no day and no season of the year will you see a male without his female: if he flies she flies with him and feeds and drinks with him, and when he perches she perches at his side, and he never utters a sound but a responsive sound immediately falls from her devoted beak. Again, it may seem unlikely that there can be pairing for life in species, like the chaffinch of northern Europe and, with us, of Scotland, in which the sexes separate and migrate separately. Also of non-gregarious species like the nightingale in which the males arrive in this country several days before the females. Yet I am confident that if we could catch and mark a considerable number of pairs it would be found that the same male and female found one another and re-mated every year. It comes to this, that birds may pair for life, yet not be all the time or all the year together, as in the case of hawks, crows, owls, herons, and many others. In numberless species which undoubtedly pair for life the sexes keep apart during several hours each day, and there is some evidence that those that separate for a part of the year remain faithful.