THE FAERY YEAR 



hope of getting in. By such wavering, the robber 

 bee is sure to expose itself; and sure enough one 

 may see the guards of the hive flying savagely at the 

 robbers and butting them. Often a robber may be 

 seen banged down into the grass. 



The wasp wavers about the hive in the same way, 

 and he too is charged by the guards, and obliged 

 to retreat hastily. I have not seen robbers actually 

 stung, though they may be at times ; the buffet 

 seems to disconcert them. A wasp, once in the hive, 

 will not only rob but murder. On the comb he will 

 cut in half an innocent bee, leave the head, and carry 

 off the body. 



The Loop of the Rook 



In sunsets, whose chilly splendour is more like 

 winter than summer, the murmuring rookery slowly 

 wends home now soon after six o'clock. Sometimes, 

 when men or women, perfectly innocent, yet objects 

 of ludicrous suspicion, are near its roost trees, the 

 whole rookery to a bird will settle in a grass-field a 

 few hundred yards off, to wait till the way is quite 

 clear. The birds are so tightly packed and so many 

 that half an acre of green seems turned to glistening 

 black. If one but stop to look over the road-side 

 hedge at such an assemblage, there is one swish of 

 wings, every bird taking the air at the same second, 

 and the rookery is off to two or three trees in 

 the distance, where again it waits and watches with 

 226 



