An Invasion of Rooks. 



At the last meeting of the British Ornithologists' Club one of 

 the members, Mr. Griffith, remarked that on getting out of the 

 train at Orpington Station, Kent, about 4.20 in the afternoon of 

 November 14 he saw an extraordinary flight of rooks passing in 

 a steady, continuous stream for 16^ minutes, apparently making 

 for Farnborough. They were winging the way in a great column 

 of from fifteen to twenty abreast, and were moving at about ten 

 miles an hour. On the lowest estimate he reckoned that about 

 13,000 passed over him, but how many had already passed before 

 he stepped out of the railway station he could not, of course, say, 

 but they stretched away southwards as far as the eye could see. 

 Whet lie r these were native birds which had been on a foraging 

 expedition and were returning to their roosting trees or whether 

 this great army were aliens come to take up their quarters here 

 it would be difficult to say. If they were native-bred birds then 



j such a gathering must have some hidden significance, for gathcr- 



I ings on such a grand scale are unprecedented. 



