OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS. 381 



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 demolished 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 unhappy 

 pairs are not permitted to finish any nest till the rest have com- 

 pleted 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 blandishments that are ex- 

 pressed by the young, while in a helpless state. This gallant 

 deportment of the males is continued through the whole season of 

 incubation. These birds do not copulate on trees, nor in their 

 nests, but on the ground in the open fields. WHITE. 



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

 leave their nest trees in the day-time, 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 clamour till they are all assembled together, 

 they take up their abode for the night. MARKWICK. 



THRUSHES. N 



Thrushes during long droughts are of great service in hunting 

 out shell snails, which they pull to 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 mistletoe, and in the spring on ivy berries, which 

 then begin to ripen. In the summer, when their young become 

 fledged, they leave neighbourhoods, and retire to sheep-walks and 

 wild commons. 



* Snails, particularly the animal of Helix metnoralis is a favourite food of the song 

 thrush. They break the shell by repeated strokes upon a stone, and it is a curious habit 

 that particular stones are selected, probably from something being convenient in their 

 position ; these are resorted to regularly, and small heaps of the broken shells may be 

 seen around them. 



