A STRANGE SPECTACLE

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 73, 28 March 1922, Page 7

A STRANGE SPECTACLE

VAST FLOCK OF MIGRATORY

BIRDS,

(BKIIII HtlS AISeCIATIMf.-^COHMMT.) (Australian-nbw zbamnd cabi/B association.) (Received Match 28, 12.15 p.m.) LONDON; 27th March. A remarkable spectacle was witnessed at Deal. A black cloud a mile long was seen coming across the Channel with a noise like approaching aircraft. -As it came closer it proved to be an enormous flock of mig2-atory starlings, from France or North Africa. [The common starling is not in general a migratory bird, but the Encyclopedia Britannica has the following reference to the species Pastor Roseus, the rosecoloured starling, which, it says, is not an infrequent visitor to the British Isles: "It is a bird of most irregular and erratic habits—a vast horde suddenly arriving at some place to which it may have hitherto been a stranger, and at once making a settlement there, leaving it wholly, deserted as soon as the young arc reared. This happened in the summer of 1875 at Villafranca, in the province of Verona, the castle of which was occupied in a single day by some 12,000 or 14,000 birds of this I species: but similar instances have been before recorded —as in Bulgaria in 1867, near Smyrna in 1856, and near Odessa in 1844, to mention only some of which particulars have been published." A furtlier note says it is remarkable that on almost all of these occasions the locality pitched upon has been, either at the time or soon after, ravaged by locusts, which the bird greedily devour. This starling's plumage is rose-pink and black shot with blue.]