ROOKS. 263 



delight. Any insect-eating bird would do the same ; and there- 

 fore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr. Ray should 

 call one species of buzzard buteo apworus sive vespivorus, or the 

 honey buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be 

 found in one of their nests. The combs were conveyed thither 

 doubtless for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, and not for 

 their honey : since none is to be found in the combs of wasps. 

 Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a 

 tame kite picking up the female ants full of eggs with much 

 satisfaction.* 



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 demolishes 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 



* That redstarts, flycatchers, blackcaps, and other slender-billed insectivorous small birds, 

 particularly the swallow tribe, make their first appearance very early in the spring, is a weli- 

 knowu fact ; though the flycatcher is the latest of them all in its visit (as this accurate naturalist 

 observes in another place), for it is never seen before the month of May. If these delicate crea- 

 tures come to us from a distant country, they will probably be exposed in their passage, as Mr. 

 White justly remarks, to much greater difficulties from storms and tempests than their feeble 

 powers appear to be able to surmount : on the other hand, if we suppose them to pass the winter 

 in a dormant state in this country concealed in caverns or other hiding places sufficiently guarded 

 from the extreme cold of our winter to preserve their life, and that at the approach of spring they 

 e from their torpid state and reassume their usual powers of action, it will entirely remove 



e first difficulty 



passage ; but how are we to get over 

 torpid state? What degree of warm 

 effect, and how it operates on the fu 

 How could Mr. White suppose tha 

 on honey, when he not only named 

 1 it feeds on insects, and brings up 



i in their 



he still greater difficulty of their revivification from their 

 h in the temperature of the air is necessary to produce that 

 ctions of animal life, are questions not easily answered. 

 Ray named this species the honey buzzard because it fed 

 in Latin buteo apworus et vespivorus, but expressly says that 

 the maggots or nymphs of w 



That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, sometimes feed on insects I have 

 little doubt, and think I have observed the common buzzard (falco buteo) to settle on the ground 

 and pick up insects of some kind or other. MARKWICK. 



The common buzzard and tawney hooter (aluco stridula) are particularly insectivorous ; and 

 the kestrel falcon has also been seen to catch chaffers on a summer evening, feeding upon them 

 while on the wing ; a better name for the honey buzzard is the common pern (pernis vulgaris) , 

 now that several are known possessing the same characters. ED. 



