ROOK 



Corvus frugtlegus 



>HE Rook is perhaps the best-known of all our British birds, 

 partly on account of its numbers, and partly because of its 

 fondness for establishing its colonies in the immediate 

 vicinity of houses and villages. It abounds everywhere, 

 throughout the British Islands, where cultivation has spread, 

 and visits the outlying islands, such as Skye, the Outer 

 Hebrides, and the Orkneys and Shetlands, on some of 

 which it occasionally breeds. 



The favourite haunts of the Rook are the well-cultivated districts, inter- 

 spersed with plantations and large trees, parks and pleasure-grounds seeming 

 to have a very strong attraction for them. In some of our towns colonies of 

 Rooks have been totally surrounded by buildings, and they rear their young 

 quite unconcernedly amid the roar of the traffic, so strong is their attachment 

 to their old nesting-quarters. The Rook is strictly a gregarious bird in all 

 its habits, whether during the nesting-season or the rearing of their young, 

 or during the summer and autumn, when they move about often in enormous 

 numbers. These gatherings very often embrace the inhabitants of several 

 colonies, the whole flock travelling, feeding, and roosting together. Towards 

 the end of winter they break up during the day, and visit their respective 

 nesting-quarters, returning at night to rejoin the other colonies at the common 

 roosting-ground. 



The note of the Rook is a loud harsh ' kraw, kraw,' or ' krah, krak,' but 

 many modulations of their cry may be heard towards evening, when they are 

 gathering at their roosting-quarters. 



Its food is very varied : it visits the pasture-lands in the early morning 

 to feed on the snails, grubs, and worms which abound there ; in sowing-time 

 it searches the cornfields for wire-worms and grubs of all kinds, taking its 

 VOL. in. z 85 



