24 MID-APRIL 
count the old nests in a rookery when the 
leaves have fallen and you can see them, and 
then count them again when the birds are 
nesting in early spring, before the leaves are 
out, you will be able to tell if the rookery has 
been enlarged by fresh nests. Only one 
brood is reared each year. Rookeries are 
deserted after the young are able to fly 
(about the first of May), the birds resorting 
to meadows and finding other roosting places. 
Their ‘ caws,’ varying as they do in intonation, 
seem to imply a Janguage intelligible to each 
other. I have often tried to fathom it, as 
perhaps the reader may have done. When 
feeding in flocks a sentinel rook will always 
be seen somewhere. Sportsmen say these 
birds can smell gunpowder before a shot is 
fired ; of course, burnt gunpowder, especially 
of the old black kind, leaves a well-known 
smell. Certainly it is only very rarely that 
they can be approached near enough to be 
shot at: The young | \< squabs*,are) ited 
eaten ; they should be skinned before being 
cooked or made into the well-known rook 
