WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 281 



wards to the wood below. They stretch from here to 

 the roosting-trees, fully a mile and a half literally as 

 the crow flies ; and backwards in the opposite direc- 

 tion the line reaches as far as the eye can see. It is 

 safe to estimate that the aerial army's line of march 

 extends over quite five miles in one unbroken corps. 

 The breadth they occupy in the atmosphere varies 

 now twenty yards, now fifty, now a hundred, on an 

 average say fifty yards ; but rooks do not fly very 

 close together, like starlings, and the mass, it may 

 be observed, fly on the same plane. Instead of three 

 or four layers one above the other, the greater number 

 pass by at the same height from the ground, side by 

 side on a level, as soldiers would march upon a road 

 not meaning, of course, an absolute but a relative 

 level. This formation is more apparent from an ele- 

 vation as it were, up among them than from be- 

 low ; and looking along their line towards the distant 

 wood it is like glancing under a black canopy. 



Small outlying parties straggle from the line now 

 on one side, now on the other ; sometimes a few de- 

 scend to alight on trees in the meadows, where doubt- 

 less their nests were situated in the spring. For it is 

 a habit of theirs, months after the nesting is over, 

 and also before it begins, to pay a flying visit to the 

 trees in the evening, calling en route to .see that all is 

 well and to assert possession. 



The rustling sound of these thousands upon thou- 

 sands of wings beating the air with slow, steady stroke 

 can hardly be compared to anything else in its weird 



