48 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



her mate is sure to be found attending upon her. If, 

 after hundreds of miles of winter wanderings, the fe- 

 male crow can unerringly return to her abandoned nest, 

 or to the tree upon which it rested, which is unquestion- 

 ably true, what improbability is there in her being 

 joined by her mate, even though for months they have 

 been separated ; a circumstance, indeed, that probably 

 but rarely occurs. 



A word here concerning the English rook. Richard 

 Jefferies, in one of his charming essays, remarks : " The 

 general idea is that they pair in February, but there are 

 some reasons for thinking that the rooks, in fact, choose 

 their mates at the end of the preceding summer. They 

 are then in large flocks, and if only casually glanced 

 at, appear mixed together without any order or arrange- 

 ment. They move on the ground and fly in the air so 

 close, one beside the other, that at the first glance or so 

 you cannot distinguish them apart. Yet if you should 

 be lingering along the by-ways of the fields as the acorns 

 fall, and the leaves come rustling down in the warm, 

 sunny, autumn afternoons, and keep an observant eye 

 upon the rooks in the trees, or on the fresh -turned 

 furrows, they will be seen to act in couples. On the 

 ground couples alight near each other, on the trees they 

 perch near each other, and in the air fly side by side. . . . 

 After the nest time is over they flock together, and each 

 family of three or four flies in concert. Later on they 

 apparently choose their own particular friends, that is, 

 the young birds do so. All through the winter, after, 

 say October, these pairs keep together, though lost in the 

 general mass to the passing spectator." The same can 



