OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 381 
ROOKS. 
Rooks are continually fighting, and pulling each other’s nests to 
pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living in such close 
community. And yet if a pair offer to build on a single tree, the 
nest is plundered and demolished at once. Some rooks roost on 
their nest trees. The twigs which the rooks drop in building 
supply the poor with brushwood to light their fires. Some unhappy 
pairs are not permitted to finish any nest till the rest have com- 
pleted their building. As soon as they get a few sticks together, a 
party comes and demolishes the whole. As soon as rooks have 
finished their nests, and before they lay, the cocks begin to feed 
the hens, who receive their bounty with a fondling tremulous voice 
and fluttering wings, and all the little blandishments that are ex- 
pressed by the young, while in a helpless state. This gallant 
deportment of the maies is continued through the whole season of 
incubation. These birds do not copulate on trees, nor in their 
nests, but on the ground in the open fields— WHITE. 
After the first brood cf rooks are sufficiently fledged, they all 
leave their nest trees in the day-time, and resort to some distant 
place in search of food, but return regularly every evening, in vast 
flights, to their nest trees, where, after flying round several times 
with much noise and clamour till they are all assembled together, 
they take up their abode for the night. —MARKWICK. 
THRUSHES, 
Thrushes during long droughts are of great service in hunting 
out shell snails, which they pull to pieces for their young, and are 
thereby very serviceable in gardens.* Missel thrushes do not 
destroy the fruit in gardens like the other species of turdi, but feed 
on the berries of mistletoe, and in the spring on ivy bose which 
then begin to ripen. In the summer, when their young become 
fledged, they leave neighbourhoods, and retire to sheep-walks and 
wild commons. 
* Snails, particularly the animal of Helix memoralis is a favourite food of the song 
thrush. ‘They break the shell by repeated strokes upon a stone, and it is a curious habit 
that particular stones are selected, probably from something being convenient in their 
position ; these are resorted to regularly, and small heaps of the “broken shells may be 
seen around them. 
