ROOK. 551 



In all its habits the Rook is a gregarious bird ; and its gatherings are 

 very often not confined to the inhabitants of one colony ; for after the 

 breeding-season the birds of several rookeries often unite and form one 

 vast gathering, feeding, flying, and roosting in company. In autumn and 

 winter the Rooks belonging to the smaller colonies visit their old nests. 

 They will leave the larger flock feeding sometimes at a considerable dis- 

 tance, and pay a hasty visit to their old homes ; but having apparently 

 satisfied themselves that the rookery is c< all right/' they rejoin their com- 

 panions. As the season advances they make a longer stay at their nests, 

 and apparently hold a consultation as to the wisdom of beginning to repair 

 them. As food becomes more plentiful they seem less and less anxious 

 to rejoin the large flock, which we may presume to have been the original 

 parent colony, and feed independently of them, on pastures nearer their 

 breeding-grounds ; but at nightfall the old social feeling seems to predo- 

 minate, and they wing their way to the common roosting-ground. It is 

 interesting to watch them flying home, with slow steady beats of the wings, 

 like the flight of a Heron, as if they were tired with the day's search for 

 food, straggling one after another to one point, as if after a long journey. 

 In some cases, probably when food is scarce, they seem not to return home, 

 but to camp out all night near their feeding-grounds ; for I have some- 

 times, when returning home in the country late at night, passed a few 

 exposed trees by the roadside black with Rooks, in a situation which one 

 cannot suppose to have been their habitual roosting-place. 



The note of the Rook is a loud krah-krah, varied to kraw-kraw, subject 

 to considerable modulations as the birds are angry or simply calling to 

 their fellows when disturbed or alarmed. In the night Rooks may be 

 often heard uttering a variety of low notes ; whilst quite a different sound 

 to the usual caw, a sort of krck, is uttered when the sitting bird is being 

 fed by its mate or when awaiting its arrival with trembling wings on the 

 edge of the nest. 



The Rook's many services to man have placed it in greater favour than 

 all its other sable congeners ; and although the farmer will often shoot a 

 few birds in sowing-time, to serve as scarecrows on his fields and potato- 

 patches, he is usually candid enough to admit that he receives no small 

 amount of benefit from the bird's visits to his lands and pastures. Various 

 indeed is the food of the Rook ; and there is not a field that he does not 

 visit at some season of the year. His visits to the pasture-lands are 

 regular and incessant, to prey upon the worms, snails, and grubs that 

 abound there, especially in the morning. He frequents the corn-lands 

 chiefly during the sowing- season ; but his little pilferings of grain are 

 amply repaid by the wireworms and the grubs of the cockchafer and the 

 craneflies which he greedily devours. The Rook is also seen upon the 

 potato- and turnip-fields, where his visits are equally beneficial, although 



