WHEN MARCH WINDS BLOW. 119 



as might be supposed ; for when the mother bird 

 gets thickly covered with snow, father rook is there 

 on the edge of the nest, with his feathers shaken 

 clear of snow, ready to take her place, with most 

 affectionate gabbles, directly she rises to flap herself 

 free from the falling snow. In less than five 

 minutes' walk from my home I can stand and 

 watch all the domestic arrangements of these very 

 industrious and sagacious birds ; and the longer 

 I watch them, the greater is my admiration for 

 them. 



At times a favourite feeding-place of theirs gets 

 well worked out. Then they have to take a wider 

 range, in hard times a very wide one. The rook, 

 in spite of his apparently deliberate movements, is 

 a grand flighter ; but his flight is a very deceiving 

 one to ordinary observers, for it takes a good trained 

 falcon to capture a rook in fair flight. No snipe 

 ever twisted sharper than a rook when it was 

 necessary for him to do so. But now, and here, 

 there is not any cause for his exerting himself 

 beyond gathering food from the sunny slopes of 

 the hollow to flap away with to his mate, who is 

 sitting in the beech-trees in the vale below. A bird 



