30 THE CROW FAMILY 



the breeding season, rooks and jackdaws may be seen feeding together 

 in the same field, the latter pert, dapper, with the air of frank rogues, 

 spying here and there and everywhere with knowing grey eyes as 

 they move briskly about with what Gilbert White would call a swagger 

 in their walk, characteristics that are in marked contrast with the 

 slower motions and the almost episcopal gravity of the rook. But for 

 all its gravity, there is in the rook a spirit of frivolity that will out, and 

 which displays itself in a variety of ways, from a few absurd sidelong 

 hops taken at random on the spur of the moment, and having no 

 apparent object, public or private, to the sudden assumption of 

 an attitude of truculent defiance towards one of its fellows. On 

 the latter occasions the tail is fanned and cocked, while the bird's 

 head and neck have an aggressive forward inclination that is intended 

 to be, and no doubt is, highly offensive to the party challenged. If the 

 challenge is accepted, there will be one or more bouts, the duellists 

 scuffling on the ground, or rising in the air, pecking at each other, 

 perhaps pausing between the rounds, one facing the other, eye to eye 

 and beak to beak. But no great harm is done, and both will, after a 

 little, desist as if by mutual consent, each going its own way, evidently 

 agreed upon regarding the incident as a temporary aberration, about 

 which the less said the better. 



This is not the only form of sporting contest indulged in by rooks. 

 They practise various aerial gambols, which they do not confine to 

 their own species. On more than one occasion, when observing rooks 

 and lapwings at rest in the same field, more or less intermingled, I 

 have seen an individual of each flock playing together in the air, 

 sometimes the rook chasing, sometimes the plover, sometimes each 

 taking for the moment an independent course of its own. The most 

 striking feature of these displays, which lasted only a minute or two, 

 was the contrast between the easy, finished actions of the plover, 

 which it accompanied with excited " pee-witts," and the comparatively 

 awkward efforts of the rook, who laboured in silence, though with 

 evident self-complacency, to assume graces beyond his skill. Finally 



