The Natural History of Selborne 417 



pressly says that " it 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 I think I 

 have observed the common buzzard, falco buteo, to settle on 

 the ground and pick up insects of some kind or other. 

 MARKWICK. 



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 brushwood to 

 light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to 

 finish any nest till the rest have completed their building. As 

 soon as they get a few sticks together, a party comes and de- 

 molishes 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 blandishments that are ex- 

 pressed 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 are sufficiently fledged, they 

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

 distant place in search of food, but return regularly every 

 evening, in vast flights, to their nest trees, where, after flying 

 round several times with much noise and clamour till they 

 are all assembled together, they take up their abode for the 

 night. MARKWICK. 



2 D 



