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Updated: May 17, 2025
A greenfinch rises with a yellow gleam and a sweet note from the grass, and is off with something for his brood, or a starling, solitary now, for his mate is in the nest, startled from his questing, goes straight away. Dark starlings, greenfinch, gilded fly, glistening beetle, blue butterfly, humble bee with scarf about his thick waist, add their moving dots of colour to the surface.
But for our frankolins and starlings we should have gone fasting. The mosque was a beautiful structure of white limestone, and the galleries of its minarets were adorned with rich arabesque ornaments. While the muezzin was crying his sunset-call to prayer, I entered the portico and looked into the interior, which was so bare as to appear incomplete.
Our house shall smack of Inigo Jones or Christopher Wren; a great square red-brick mass, made light and cheerful though, by quoins and windows of white Sarsden stone; with high-peaked French roofs, broken by louvres and dormers, haunted by a thousand swallows and starlings. Old walled gardens, gay with flowers, shall stretch right and left.
After an interval of three weeks the stolen drake was recovered, and instantly the pair recognised each other with extreme joy. On the other hand, starlings, as we have seen, may be consoled thrice in the same day for the loss of their mates.
Starlings in like manner pack after their young can fly, but then they do not separate in autumn. It may be remarked that by autumn the young missel-thrushes would not only fly well, but would have been educated by the old birds, and would have come to maturity. Their natural independence might then come into play.
The other buildings stood close together in rows; and so valuable was every inch of room accounted, that, in many cases, cellars, and even habitable apartments, were constructed in the solid masonry of the piers. Would a Rialto make for depth and height! The arches stood upon enormous piers; the piers on starlings, or jetties, built far out into the river to break the force of the tide.
The small ivy disc or platform on top of the tree was a favourite stand and look-out for the downland birds. I seldom visited the spot without disturbing some of them, now a little company of missel-thrushes, now a crowd of starlings, then perhaps a dozen rooks, crowded together, looking very big and conspicuous on their little platform.
We hurried out and along the road to the country, the priest trailing his umbrella behind him, speaking of the temperance hall but preoccupied about the funeral he had missed, my eyes marking the flight of flocks of starlings making westward. Less than a mile of ground brought us to the spot where the paupers were buried.
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