108 



THE JACKDAW. 



Rook has reared his progeny, and has carried off such of them as have 

 escaped the arts of men and boys, he retires every evening at a late 

 hour, during the autumn and winter months, to the closest coverts of 

 the forest, after having spent the day in the open fields and enclosures, 

 in quest of food. 



Among all the sounds of animal nature, few are more grateful than 

 the cawing of Rooks. The Rook has but two or three notes, and 

 «vhen he attempts a soh we cannot praise his song; but when he per- 

 forms in concert, which is his chief delight, these notes, although rough 

 in themselves, being intermixed with those of the multitude, have, as 

 it were, all their rough edges worn off, and become harmonious, 

 sspecially when softened in the air, where the bird chiefly performs. 

 We have this music in perfection, when the whole colony is raised by 

 the discharge of a gun. 



Dr. Darwin has remarked, that a consciousness of danger from man- 

 kind is much more apparent in Rooks than in most other birds. Any 

 one who has in the least attended to them, will see that they evidently 

 distinguish that the danger is greater when a man is armed with a gun, 

 than when he has no weapon with him. In the spring of the year, if 

 « person happen to walk under a rookery with a gun in his hand, the 

 inhabitants of the trees rise on their wings, and scream to the un- 

 fledged young to shrink into their nests from the sight of the enemy. 

 The country-people, observing this circumstance so uniformly to occur, 

 assert that Rooks can smell gunpowder. 



In England these birds remain during the whole year; and both in 

 France and Silecia they migrate. 



THE JACKDAW. 



Jackdaws are qovxEjuts. birds in England, where they remain during 



the whole year ; but in some 

 parts of the Continent they 

 are migratory. 



They frequent old towers 

 and ruins in great flocks, 

 where they construct the..r 

 nests; and they have been 

 sometimes known to build 

 in hollow trees, near a rook 

 ery, and to join the Rooks 

 in their foraging parties. 

 In some parts of Hampshire, 

 from the great scarcity of 

 towers or steeples, they are 

 obliged to form their neste 

 under-ground, in the Kabbit- 

 tioles; they also build in the interstices between the upright and 

 cross stones of Stonehenge, far out of the reach of the shepherd- 

 boys, who are always idling about that place. In the Isle of Ely 



