286 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



gradually closed in around their favourite haunts. 

 Yet on the small waste spots covered with cinders 

 and dustheaps, barren and unlovely, the rooks still 

 alight ; and you may see them, when driven up from 

 such places, perching on the telegraph wires over the 

 very steam of the locomotives as they puff into the 

 station. 



I think that neither considerations of food, water, 

 shelter, nor convenience are always the determining 

 factors in the choice made by birds of the spots they 

 frequent ; for I have seen many cases in which all of 

 these were evidently quite put on one side. Birds to 

 ordinary observation seem so unfettered, to live so 

 entirely without rhyme or reason, that it is difficult to 

 convey the idea that the precise contrary is really the 

 case. 



Returning to these two great streams of rooks, 

 which pour every evening in converging currents from 

 the north and east upon the wood : why do they do 

 this ? Why not go forth to the west, or to the south, 

 where there are hills and meadows and streams in 

 equal number ? Why not scatter abroad, and return 

 according to individual caprice ? Why, to go still 

 further, do rooks manoeuvre in such immense num- 

 bers, and crows fly only in pairs ? The simple truth is 

 that birds, like men, have a history. They are un- 

 conscious of it, but its accomplished facts affect them 

 still and shape the course of their existence. Without 

 doubt, if we could trace that history back, there are 

 good and sufficient reasons why rooks prefer to fly, in 



