Every Anglo-Indian is acquainted with the rose-coloured starling (Pastor roseus), although some may not know what to call it. Nevertheless, it is a bird of many aliases; to wit, the rosy pastor, the tillyer, the cholum bird, the jowaree bird, the mulberry bird, the locust-eater, the golabi maina. The head, neck, breast, wings, and tail are glossy black, while the remainder of the plumage is a pale salmon or faint rose-colour. The older the bird the more rosy it becomes, but the great majority are pale salmon, rather than pink.

Rose-coloured starlings are sociable birds. They go about in large companies, which sometimes number several thousand individuals. They are cold-weather visitors to India, spreading themselves all over the peninsula, being most abundant in the Deccan. In the north straggling flocks occur throughout the winter, but it is in April that they are seen in their thousands, preparatory to leaving the country for breeding purposes. These great gatherings tarry for a short time in Northern India while the mulberries and various grain crops are ripening. They seem to subsist chiefly upon these, whence some of their popular names, and the malice which the farmer bears them. They are undoubtedly a very great scourge to the latter, but they are not an unmixed pest, for they are said to devour locusts with avidity when the opportunity presents itself. Now, the slaying of a locust is a work of merit which ought to neutralise a multitude of sins.

The rosy starlings which occur in India are said to nest in Asia Minor. This may be so, but I am inclined to think that there must be some breeding-grounds nearer at hand, for these birds have been observed in India as late as July, and they are back with us again in September. To travel to Asia Minor, construct nests, lay eggs, hatch these out, rear up the young, and return to India with them, all within the space of two months, is an almost impossible feat. It is, of course, probable that the birds which remain in India so late as July do not return as early as September.

The large flocks of rosy starlings are quite a feature of spring in Northern India. On the principle that many hands make light work, a company of these birds experiences no difficulty in speedily thinning a crop of ripening corn. The starlings feed chiefly in the morning and before sunset. During the heat of the day they usually take a long rest, a habit for which the crop-watchers ought to be very thankful. When not feeding, rosy starlings usually congregate in hundreds in lofty trees which are almost bare of foliage. They then look like dried leaves. I have spoken of this as a rest, which is not strictly accurate. They certainly do not feed, but they constantly flit about from branch to branch, and do a great deal of feather preening, and, during the whole day, they give forth a joyful noise. Their note is a sibilant twitter which is not very loud; indeed, considering the efforts put into it, there is remarkably little result, but the notes are so persistent, and so many birds talk at once, that they can be heard from afar. The song of the rosy starling is not musical, not more so than the “chitter, chitter” of a flock of sparrows at bed-time, yet it is not displeasing to the ear. There is an exuberance in it which is most attractive. It cannot be conversational, for all the birds talk at once, and their notes lack expression and variety. Their clamour is not unlike the singing of the kettle as it stands on the hob; in each case the sound is caused by the letting off of superfluous energy. Starlings literally bubble over with animal spirits. There can be no question as to their enjoyment of life.

Rosy starlings are the favourite game birds of the natives of Northern India, for they are very good to eat and easy to shoot. When a thousand of them are perched in a bare tree, a shot fired into “the brown” usually secures a number of victims. It is, therefore, not difficult to obtain a big bag. Needless to say, the natives shoot these birds sitting. The way in which Europeans persist in firing only at flying objects is utterly incomprehensible to the average Indian; he regards it as part of the magnificent madness which is the mark of every sahib. I once asked a native Shikari if he had ever fired at a flying bird. He was a gruff old man, and not afraid to express his feelings. He looked me up and down with eyes filled with withering contempt, and said “What do you take me for? Am I a sahib, that I should waste powder and shot on flying things? I never fire unless I think that by so doing I am likely to bring down at least six birds.”

It is impossible to watch a flock of jowaree birds without being struck by what I may perhaps term their corporate action, the manner in which they act in unison, as though they were well-drilled soldiers obeying the commands of their officer. This phenomenon is observable in most species of sociable birds, but, so far as I am aware, no ornithologist, save Mr. Edmund Selous, has paid much attention to the matter, or attempted to explain it. To illustrate. A flock of rosy starlings will be sitting motionless in a tree giving vent to their twittering notes, when suddenly, without any apparent cause, the whole flock will take to its wings simultaneously, as if actuated by one motive, nay, as if it were one composite individual. Again, a flock will be moving along at great speed, when suddenly the whole company will make a half-turn, and continue the flight in another direction. Yet again, a number of rosy starlings will be speeding through the air when six or seven of them, suddenly and simultaneously, change the direction of their flight, and thus form, as it were, a cross current. How are we to explain these simultaneous changes of purpose? It is not, at any rate, not always, a case of “follow my leader,” for frequently no one individual moves before the others. In some cases at least the change in purpose is not due to any command, no sound being uttered previous to one of these sudden impulsive acts. Mr. Selous seeks to explain the phenomenon by assuming that “birds, when gathered together in large numbers, act, not individually, but collectively, or rather, that they do both one and the other.” According to him, the simultaneous acts in these cases are the result of thought-transference—a thought-wave passes through the whole flock.

Some may be inclined to scoff at this theory, but such will, I think, find it difficult to put forward any other explanation of the difficulty. As Mr. Selous points out, it seems “a little curious that language of a more perfect kind than animals use has been so late in developing itself, but animals would feel less the want of a language if thought-transference existed amongst them to any appreciable extent.” Whether Mr. Selous has hit upon the correct explanation I hesitate to say. There is, however, no denying the fact that flocks of birds frequently act with what he calls “multitudinous oneness.”