Many other birds exhibit a similar trait: instead of perching on the first branch, they hesitate, and daintily decline the bough not quite to their fancy. Blackbirds will cruise along the whole length of a hedge before finding a bush to their liking; they look in several times ere finally deciding. Wood-pigeons will make straight for a tree, and slacken speed and show every sign of choosing it, and suddenly, without the slightest cause apparently, go half a mile farther. The partridge which you could vow had dropped just over the hedge has done no such thing; just before touching the ground she has turned at right angles and gone fifty yards down it. The impression left after watching the motions of birds is that of extreme mobility--a life of perpetual impulse checked only by fear. With one or two exceptions, they do not appear to have the least idea of saving labour by clearing one spot of ground of food before flying farther: they just hastily snatch a morsel and off again; or, in a tree, peer anxiously into every crack and crevice on one bough, and away to another tree a hundred yards distant, leaving fifty boughs behind without examination. Starlings literally race over the earth where they are feeding--jealous of each other lest one should be first, and so they leave a tract all around not so much as looked at. Then, having run a little way, they rise and fly to another part of the field. Each starling seems full of envy and emulation--eager to outstrip his fellow in the race for titbits; and so they all miss much of what they might otherwise find. Their life is so gregarious that it resembles that of men in cities: watching one another with feverish anxiety--pushing and bustling. Larks are much calmer, and always appear placid even in their restlessness, and do not jostle their neighbours. See--the hawk, after going nearly out of sight, has swept round, and passes again at no great distance; this is a common habit of his kind, to beat round in wide circles. As the breeze strikes him aslant his course he seems to fly for a short time partly on one side, like a skater sliding on the outer edge.