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The same impulse seizes every individual bird at the same instant, as if they were sprung by electricity. Or when a flock of birds is in flight, it is still one body, one will; it will rise, or circle, or swoop with a unity that is truly astonishing. A flock of snow buntings will perform their aerial evolutions with a precision that the best-trained soldiery cannot equal.
Buntings desert their territories temporarily and collect in flocks on the newly sown fields of grain. Some of the males are single, others are paired, and accompanied, it may be, by their mates; they wander over the ground in search of food, uttering their call-notes from time to time, or, settling upon the hedges and trees surrounding the field, rest there and preen their feathers.
Some of the residents, the Buntings and the Finches for example, occupy their breeding ground very early in the year, and it often happens that the situations which they select are not capable of supplying them with food so early in the season, though at a later date food will be there in abundance; so that they are compelled to resort to the surrounding neighbourhood, and since, even there, the available supply is sometimes scarce or, if plentiful, limited to certain areas, they are constrained from time to time to join together again in flocks.
From the branch of a maple that sent its roots into the more defined grade came the dreamy notes of a mourning dove, from a walnut tree a cuckoo uttered his queer song that perhaps was the same as these strange people listened to; indigo buntings sent their high pitched breezy song from the tops of the trees, while the warbling vireo seemed to be saying, "who were they?" and the clear, melodious call of a quail rang from the highest part of the embankment, with just enough querulousness in it to appear as if he too were trying to recall this lost race.
The forest fragrance grows stronger; there is a scent of warmth and damp earth; the fluttering breeze dies away at your side. The birds go to sleep not all at once but after their kinds; first the finches are hushed, a few minutes later the warblers, and after them the yellow buntings. In the forest it grows darker and darker.
Buntings associate in small flocks and affect open rather than well-wooded country. They are not very interesting birds. A small bird that spends hours together on the wing, dashing through the air at great speed, frequently changing its course, now flying high, now just skimming the ground, must be either a swallow or a swift.
I have followed the swallows, but the fieldfares and the buntings must also go soon. They will make their way South also, though some may go in leisurely fashion to catch the glorious burst of spring in Siberia. I have been grievously puzzled and partly delighted by Mr. Seebohm's account of the birds' pilgrimage, and it has given me hours of thought.
John saw one in a stubble field, in which several corn buntings were flying about, or alighting on a thistle. The animal disappeared at the foot of this thistle, and the above gentleman thought he had slunk into a hole, but feeling sure by his manner he intended some mischief, he stayed to watch his movements.
We mark her absence during the conflicts between the respective males of many common species the Finches, Buntings, and Thrushes that occupy their territories early in the season when the hedgerows and trees are still bare; but more frequently amongst those that inhabit open ground, because the movements of the birds are there more accessible to observation.
The same thing may be noticed among the birds in their love chasings; the pursuer seems to know perfectly the mind of the pursued. This concert of action among birds is very curious. When they are on the alert, a flock of sparrows, or pigeons, or cedar-birds, or snow buntings, or blackbirds, will all take flight as if there were but one bird, instead of a hundred.
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