"THE CLANGING ROOKERY" 



NUT HILL, across the thirty-acre piece, has a rosy 

 outline against the western sky. The century-withered 

 oak is sharply silhouetted in all its ringers, and up 

 from behind it comes the first rook of the string that 

 any evening this winter has come that way from the 

 great fallows to their roosting-place in the woods. We 

 think with Tennyson that it must be " the many- 

 wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home." 

 But it is not yet home that he leads them, and his 

 string is proportionately silent until the roosting- 

 place is reached, and the business of settling down 

 for the night begins. 



The string passes morning and evening within a 

 hundred yards of the group of elms that holds the 

 nests of last year, and frequently, both at morning 

 and at evening, the rooks pay a visit to see that their 

 summer habitation is properly weathering the storms. 

 To-night, as in the golden glow of the sun's promise 

 they approach the rookery, the troop, not excluding 

 the many-wintered one, yields to the exciting sugges- 

 tion it arouses, in a frenzy of " break-necking." As 

 they pass, high up, a bird towards the rear suddenly 

 dives towards earth as if shot, then, two hundred feet 

 lower, retrims his wings, and allows the impetus to 

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