438 Practical Game Preserving. 



is very slightly wanting in cunning and wariness. Its 

 nesting habits are too well known to need description, 

 but we may note that rooks do not confine themselves 

 to the limits of a rookery when choosing the site for 

 their nest, which is large, very often clumsy, and resembles 

 in a great degree that of the crow, but is scarcely so big. 

 Outside a rookery the same characteristics determine the 

 site as with the crow. The rook is of a particularly 

 active nature, and is both an early riser and late in going 

 to roost. Its daily existence we need not describe, because 

 it is sufficiently well known, but will devote attention to 

 the somewhat delicate question, What constitutes its food ? 

 This may be said to consist in the main of corn, insects, 

 grubs, berries, fruits, vegetables, rabbits, game and eggs. 

 The question between the game preserving interest and 

 the farming interest is, whether the bird be as destructive 

 of noxious insect life in supplying itself with food as to 

 warrant overlooking its misdeeds as regards the crops and 

 against game in its various forms, and we devote a 

 little attention to the matter from both points of view. 



Corn, it is quite evident, is, during the earlier portion of 

 the year, to be obtained by the bird in plenty, while at 

 other times it is out of reach. No one can deny that 

 rooks consume an immense amount of spring-sown corn, 

 whether when first spread over the ground, when harrowed, 

 rolled in, or when in the blade, up to such time as the 

 original grain disappears. The parts of these islands 

 we have lived in are not by any means of exceptional 

 character, and we have many times seen, with regret, 

 flights innumerably large, busily engaged in corn fields in 



