132 THE RIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
_ I met in a Scotch paper with the following instance of 
the destruction of eggs by these birds, and have no 
reason to doubt its authenticity :-— 
“Mr. Purves of Linton Burnfoot, near Kelso, had a 
tree on his farm in which a hooded crow had built her 
nest and hatched her eggs. Mr. Purves then went with 
the intention of destroying the young, but found he was 
too late, as they had flown. The ground around the 
tree was so thickly strewed with eggshells that he 
obtained the assistance of two friends and took the 
trouble to pick them up and count them, when they 
amounted to the large number of 196, all the eggs of 
the partridge, which had evidently been brought to feed 
the young.” 
The Rook (Corvus frugilegus), with perhaps one ex- 
ception, is more numerous than any bird in our district ; 
that exception is the jackdaw, which, though it does not 
assemble in immense flocks like the rook, yet, I think, 
equals it in numbers. Rookeries, great and small, are 
scattered all over our neighbourhood, those in Thoresby 
Park being the largest and most thickly populated. One 
of these, in a grove of Scotch fir and oak, about a quarter 
of a mile from the mansion, is of immense extent, and 
its occupants must be counted by thousands. 
I have seen them in an evening when they were re- 
turning to their nests, quite darken the air with their 
flight, and on one or two occasions, when the turf 
has been infested more than usually with the larvee of 
the cockchafer, they have literally blackened a patch of 
ground about a quarter of a mile square; and never 
shall I forget the amazement with which a relative of 
mine, fresh from a town residence, gazed on their count- 
less numbers. 
