BIRDS. 429 



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 de- 

 molished 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 un- 

 happy pairs are not permitted to finish any nests 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 fondling tremulous 

 voice, and fluttering wings, and all the little blandish- 

 ments that are expressed by the young, while in a 

 helpless state. This gallant deportment of the male 

 is continued through the whole season of incubation. 

 These birds do not pair on trees, nor in their nests, but 

 on the ground in the open fields 2 . 



THRUSHES. 



THRUSHES during long droughts are of great service 

 in hunting out shell snails, which they pull in pieces 

 for their young, and are thereby very serviceable in 

 gardens. Missel thrushes do not 'destroy the fruit in 

 gardens like the other species of Turdi, but feed on the 

 berries of misseltoe, and in the spring on ivy berries, 

 which then begin to ripen. In the summer, when their 



2 After the first brood of rooks are sufficiently fledged, they all leave 

 their nest trees in the daytime, and resort to some distant place in search 

 of food, but return regularly every evening, in vast flights, to their nest 

 trees, where, after flying round several times with much noise and cla- 

 mour, till they are all assembled together, they take up their abode for 

 the night. MARKWICK. 



[This proceeding of the rooks is beautifully described by White in 

 Letter LIX. to Daines Barrington, p. 381.] 



