334 Fall of an aged Ash Tree. 



they must have worked their way from the bottom. May not 

 the 



Woodpeckers bore into decayed trees, for the double purpose 

 both of forming a suitable situation for making their nests, 

 and also of feeding on these and similar insects to be found 

 therein ? Should the bird, while working out its habitation, 

 chance to meet one of the fat grubs of the Z)6rcus or Sino- 

 dendron, it would, no doubt, afford him a rich and delicious 

 morsel. 



Several species of the feathered race will have cause, no 

 less than the proprietor himself, to lament the loss of this 

 aged tree. 



The Rooks, indeed, never, to my knowledge, occupied it, 

 though they built in several adjoining trees of no greater 

 altitude, and much smaller dimensions. These birds appear 

 to be capricious in their choice of a situation* ; and as it is 

 difficult to induce them to take to trees which they do not 

 freely, and of their own accord, select for the purpose of 

 nidificationf, so neither is it easy to expel them from such as 

 they have voluntarily selected. 



The Starlings usually found suitable accommodation for 

 themselves in some of the deep nooks and interstices formed 

 by the interlacing stems of the ivy ; and, like their favoured 

 kindred at Walton Hall J, were allowed to rear their broods 

 in peace and security. A pair of 



Stockdoves §, or at least of some species of wild pigeon, 

 annually occupied the shelf-like entrance of a cavity occasioned 

 by the rupture of a large horizontal arm, which had been 



* Not a single rook's nest was completed last spring in the group of 

 elms situated near the south-west angle of the church, though many were 

 begun, and pulled to pieces, and begun again, and the trees themselves had 

 for many years been a favourite resort of the birds. The spring before 

 (1831), there had been a rather unusually large number of nests in the 

 same groupdA t .M.A bfiR .G.M t YAHfl* 



T I have been informed, but cannot vouch for the accuracy of the state- 

 ment, that the readiest way to establish a rookery where one did not pre- 

 viously exist, is to withdraw the eggs from the nest of a magpie that is 

 about to sit, and has built near the place where it is wished the new colony 

 should be raised, and to substitute in their room the eggs of the rook. 

 The young birds, it is said, will return the following spring, and take up 

 their quarters in the same tree in which they were reared. 



J See an interesting article in defence of this bird's harmless character, 

 by C. Waterton, Esq., p. 37. 



§ Without having particularly attended to them, 1 had supposed these 

 pigeons to have been the common wood-pigeon, or queest ; but, since the 

 fall of the tree (which happened to start conversation on the subject), I 

 have been assured by an intelligent domestic that they were not wood- 

 pigeons, but stockdoves. If this information be correct, it adds a new 

 bird to our parish Fauna : I was not previously aware that the last-named 

 species occurred in this neighbourhood. 



