OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS 333 



ROOKS. Rooks are continually fighting and pulling 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 per- 

 mitted to finish any nest 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 fin- 

 ished 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 blandishments that 

 are expressed by the young while in a helpless state. This 

 gallant deportment of the males is continued through the 

 whole season of incubation. These birds do not copulate on 

 trees, nor in their nests, but on the ground in the open fields. 

 WHITE. 



After the first brood of rooks is sufficiently fledged, they all 

 leave their nest trees in the day-time, and resort to some dis- 

 tant place in search of food, but return regularly every even- 

 ing, in vast flights, to their nest trees, where, after flying round 

 several times with much noise and clamor till they are all as- 

 sembled together, they take up their abode for the night. 

 MARKWICK. 



THRUSHES. Thrushes during long droughts are of great 

 service in hunting out shell snails, which they pull to pieces 

 for their young, and are thereby very serviceable in gardens. 

 Missel-thrushes do not destroy the fruit in gardens like the 

 other species of turdi, but feed on the berries of mistletoe, and 

 in the spring on ivy berries, which then begin to ripen. In the 

 summer, when their young become fledged, they leave neigh- 

 borhoods and retire to sheep-walks and wild commons. 



The magpies, when they have young, destroy the broods of 

 missel-thrushes, though the dams are fierce birds and fight 

 boldly in defence of their nests. It is probably to avoid such 

 insults that this species of thrush, though wild at other times, 



