BIRDS OF THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 63 



104. CORVUS FRUGILEGUS, Linnaeus. Rook. 



Generally distributed, and each year gradually in- 

 creasing several fresh colonies, offshoots from the 

 great rookeries, having been founded during the last 

 ten years. In the marshes and their border-lands, 

 where trees are sparsely scattered, odd situations are 

 sometimes selected for nesting. I have known them 

 build in pollard willows, in young ash plantations 

 where the trees average below twenty feet, on an 

 apple-tree in an orchard not more than seven feet 

 from the ground, and several nests in a rough quick- 

 thorn hedge. They congregate in enormous flocks 

 during the autumn and winter, feeding daily in the 

 marshes; hundreds also every morning cross the 

 H umber to the fertile lands of Holderness, returning 

 at sunset to roost in the Lincolnshire woods. There 

 is no more familiar sight in our marsh land on a win- 

 ter afternoon than the long flight of Rooks returning 

 homeward in still calm weather mere black moving 

 specks against the crimson glow of sunset, but on 

 wild stormy evenings flying very low, often but a few 

 feet above the marsh. 



The following anecdote of the Rook is related by 



a Carrion-Crow on a large tree at Ilackness, where they suc- 

 ceeded in rearing their young." 



In the western districts of Scotland, where both the Hooded 

 and Carrion-Crow are found, the two species invariably pair. 

 See Mr. Gray's < Birds of the West of Scotland/ p. 170. 



