338 OBSERVATIONS 



feeds on insects, and brings up its young with the 

 maggots, or nymphs of wasps ?" 



That birds of prey, when in want of their proper 

 food, flesh, sometimes feed on insects, I have little 

 doubt, and think I have observed the common buz- 

 zard, ffalco buteo,) to settle on the ground and pick 

 up insects of some kind or other *. MARK WICK. 



ROOKS. Rooks are continually fighting, and pull- 

 ing 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 brush- 

 wood to light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are 

 not permitted to finish any nests till the rest have 

 completed 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 blan- 

 dishments that are expressed by the young, while in 

 a helpless state. This gallant deportment of the 

 male is continued through the whole season of in- 

 cubation. These birds do not copulate on trees, nor 

 in their nests, but on the ground in the open fields f. 



WHITE. 



* There is reason to believe, that insects form also part of the 

 food even of the larger beasts of prey. " Beetles, flies, worms, 

 form part of the lion and tiger's food, as they do that of the fox." 

 See JARROLD'S Dissert, on Man. MITFORD. 



f The very beautiful, one may almost say poetical, way in 

 which the male bird procures a mate by the power of his song, 

 may be seen in the preface to Mr. Moritagu's Ornithological Die- 



