438 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



slide him up again. Meanwhile, nearly a dozen of 

 his companions have followed his example, and the 

 air is full of downward darting, upward gliding rooks, 

 and with the excited clamour that accompanies the 

 manoeuvre. " Means rain," says the gardener, who 

 cannot resist standing to watch the performance he 

 has witnessed annually for overisixty years. It may, 

 for the rooks' resting-time falls in the time of the 

 equinoctial gales, and " break-necking " means nesting. 



Already the morning inspection of last summer's 

 nests has become a little more than mere noting. A 

 stick here and there has been readjusted, or just taken 

 hold of and released, as we take up and put down 

 again a garden tool that we encounter while the garden 

 is in the hands of winter. Very soon, the ground 

 beneath the nests will be littered with newly broken 

 sticks, the peaceful " caw, caw " will be showered 

 again on the house as though descending on the sun- 

 beams, the slightly more agitated bickerings will be 

 heard of rooks protesting against the rape of their 

 tie-beams by lazier nest-builders, and all the come- 

 dies and the tragedies of the rookery, as far as we 

 can understand them, will be re-enacted for our 

 benefit. 



The rooks will come again, of course, to our elms. 

 There are other and more eligible trees. A neighbour 

 has an ideal thin line of tall oak, into which he is 

 taking pains to attract a rookery. He has woven 

 baskets of green twigs, as much like rooks' nests as 

 he can make them, and has fixed them in the tops of 

 the trees, and this year he has filled them with waggon- 

 grease, and has watched the rooks with pleasure come 

 and help themselves to the questionable dainty. It is 



