252 CORVID.E. 



ground. About the second week in March they desert the 

 winter roosting places, to which they had nightly con- 

 gregated in enormous flocks, leave off their w^andering 

 habits, and repair as if by common consent to their old 

 breeding places. Here, with much cawing and bustling, 

 they survey the ruins of their old nests, or select sites for 

 new ones, being guided by their instinct to avoid all those 

 trees the upper branches of which are too brittle for their 

 purpose, either because the trees are sickly or in an in- 

 cipient state of decay. Hence, when it has occasionally 

 happened that a nestless tree in a rookery has been blown 

 down, the birds have been sahited as prophets, while in 

 reality the tree yielded to the blast before its fellows 

 because it was unsound, the Rooks knowing nothing about 

 the matter, except that signs of decay had set in among 

 the upper twigs while as yet all seemed solid beneath. 

 How the birds squabble about their nests, how they punish 

 those thievishly disposed, how they drive away intruders 

 from strange rookeries, how scrupulously they avoid, during 

 building, to pick up a stick that has chanced to drop, how 

 the male bird during incubation feeds his mate with the 

 most luscious grubs brought home in the baggy pouch at 

 the base of his bill, how every time that a bird caws while 

 perched he strains his whole body forward and expands 

 his wings with the effort, all these things, and many more, 

 I must pass over without further notice, leaving them to be 

 verified by the reader with the help of a spy-glass, or, what 

 is far better, a good double opera-glass. I must, however, 

 mention, in passing, the custom so generally adopted by 

 sportsmen, of shooting the young birds as soon as they are 

 sufficiently fledged to chmb from their nests to the ad- 

 joining twigs, or to perform their first tentative flight over 

 the summits of the trees. It may be necessary to keep 

 down their numbers, and Eook pie may be a dainty dish ; 

 but I should be glad if some other means could be devised 

 of destroying supernumeraries. I have, however, little 



