162 THE BIRDS OF SUSSEX. 



the destruction of this grand establishment^ several smaller 

 Rookeries have sprung up in the county. 



Before a gale, I have often seen Rooks ascend to what 

 Gilbert White would call a prodigious height in the air, 

 circling about, and now and then descending rapidly, nearly 

 to the ground, and continuing these manoeuvres sometimes 

 for an hour together. 



In DanieFs ' Rural Sports,^ 1807, vol. iii., we find the 

 following : — '^ Between the Rook and the Raven there appears 

 a wonderful antipathy. Mr. Markwick says, that in 1778, so 

 soon as a Raven had built her nest in a tree adjoining to a 

 very numerous Rookery, all the Rooks immediately forsook 

 the spot, and have not returned to build there since. 



At the Bishop of Chichester's Rookery, at Broomham, 

 near Hastings, upon a Raven building her nest in one of the 

 trees, the Rooks left the place. They, however, returned to 

 their haunts in the following autumn, and built their nests 

 there the succeeding year. It is no very difficult task to 

 account for this antipathy; the Raven will scarcely suffer 

 any bird to come within a quarter of a mile of its nest, being 

 exceedingly fierce in defending it ; besides, the Ravens 

 seize the young Rooks from their nests, to feed their own : 

 this, at Mr. Seymer's, at Harford, in Dorsetshire, Mr. Lam- 

 bert was eye-witness to, and there was no rest in the 

 Rookery, night or day, till one of the old Ravens and the 

 young ones were destroyed.'^ 



The Rook occasionally builds on trees in our towns, as, for 

 example, at Brighton, where it may often be seen settling on 

 the pinnacles of the Pavilion. 



