MARCH. 41 



rest soon follow. Similarly, the fields where the 

 lambs are attacked are plentifully surrounded and 

 sprinkled with trees, whereas the forty-acre field, 

 efficiently policed by two scarecrows, has not a tree 

 near it. There the crow-birds have, as it were, no 

 halfway house where they can sit and calculate 

 chances before venturing upon the forbidden ground. 



SPRING IN BLACK AND WHITE. 



March 13. Two of the pleasantest country signs 

 of spring are the return of the rooks to the rookery 

 and of the lambs to the field tokens in black and 

 white that winter is ended. Though, when the rooks 

 have returned, there can be no mistaking the fact, 

 how few of us have actually witnessed their home- 

 coming. During the winter they pay occasional*visits 

 to the old trees, and as spring approaches these in- 

 spections occur more frequently, until in early March 

 you may see them busy about the nests every morn- 

 ing. Then the ground under the trees becomes 

 littered with the old sticks that they have pulled 

 out of last year's nests, and you know that they will 

 soon resume residence. But they leave the rookery 

 before noon daily, and you grow quite accustomed 

 to see the trees full of birds every morning, but stand- 

 ing silent and empty against the sky in the evening. 

 For some days before they actually return they very 

 nearly do so, for as the dusk is falling you may see 

 small parties of them winging their silent way over 

 the fields towards the rookery instead of to their 

 winter roosting-place ; and others, seeing them, will 

 follow. 



