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 their first eggs or broods. And no sooner are the young brought off and instructed in the starling's sole vocation (except his fruit-eating) of extracting the grubs it subsists on from the roots of the grass--a business which detains them for a week or two--than the married life is apparently over and the communal life resumed. The whole life of the bird is then changed; the sole tie appears to be that of the flock; home and young are forgotten: the birds range hither and thither about the land, and by and by migrate to distant places, some passing oversea, while others from the northern counties and from Scotland and the islands come down to the south of England, where they winter in millions and myriads. There they form the winter habit of congregating in immense numbers in the evening at their favourite roosting-places, and hundreds and thousands of small flocks, which during the daylight hours exist distributed over an area of hundreds of square miles all make to one point and combine into one flock. At such times they actually appear to rejoice in their own incalculable numbers and gather earlier than they need at the roosting-place, so that the whole vast gathering may spend an hour or so in their beloved aerial exercises. To anyone who witnesses these gatherings and sees the birds rising from time to time from the wood, and appearing like a big black cloud in the sky, growing lighter and darker alternately as the birds scatter wide or mass themselves in a closer formation, until after wheeling about for some minutes they pour back into the trees; and who listens to the noise they make, as of a high wind in the wood, composed, as it is, of an infinity of individual voices, it must seem incredible that all these birds can keep in pairs. For how could any couple hold together in such circumstances, or when separated ever meet again in such a multitude, or, should they ever meet by chance, how recognize one another when all are exactly alike in size, shape, colour and voice?