Birds by Land and Sea 



exacting, the duties of paternity are sacred. They 

 must be fulfilled, however much he might desire to 

 stay at home and rock the cradle. 



And so the old hypocrite slips quietly from the 

 bough, and gets under weigh again, leaving the nest- 

 ridden hen to clamber into her place and, possibly, 

 dream of the time when she will take the children 

 down into the fields herself, and they will all eat 

 wireworms together. 



Another curious incident in connection with our 

 rooks came under my notice about this time, and 

 it owes its interest, perhaps, to the feeling that, if the 

 actions of a bird and of a man under a certain set of 

 circumstances are similar, the impulses prompting 

 such actions will also be similar ; and to the belief 

 that a man may to this extent penetrate the otherwise 

 closed mind and feelings of a bird. 



I had just passed a low hedge one morning at 

 the middle of April, when I heard a sudden com- 

 motion of wings, and, looking back, saw a rook 

 sweeping at a great rate just beyond the hedge. 

 Having taken no further notice at the time, I was 

 returning by the same way half an hour later, and 

 observed a pair of wings flapping in the wind upon 

 the grass at the spot where the commotion had been 

 heard. I found them to be those of a rook which 

 lay, with its head completely doubled under its 

 breast, just dead. As there was no further evidence 

 of violence in the otherwise undisturbed plumage of 

 the bird, I concluded that one rook had been chasing 



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