132 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 



I met in a Scotch paper with the following instance of 

 the destruction of eggs by these birds, and have no 

 reason to doubt its authenticity : 



"Mr. Purves of Linton Burnfoot, near Kelso, had a 

 tree on his farm in which a hooded crow had built her 

 nest and hatched her eggs. Mr. Purves then went with 

 the intention of destroying the young, but found he was 

 too late, as they had flown. The ground around the 

 tree was so thickly strewed with eggshells that he 

 obtained the assistance of two friends and took the 

 trouble to pick them up and count them, when they 

 amounted to the large number of 196, all the eggs of 

 the partridge, which had evidently been brought to feed 

 the young/' 



The Rook (Corvus frugilegus), with perhaps one ex- 

 ception, is more numerous than any bird in our district ; 

 that exception is the jackdaw, which, though it does not 

 assemble in immense flocks like the rook, yet, I think, 

 equals it in numbers. Rookeries, great and small, are 

 scattered all over our neighbourhood, those in Thoresby 

 Park being the largest and most thickly populated. One 

 of these, in a grove of Scotch fir and oak, about a quarter 

 of a mile from the mansion, is of immense extent, and 

 its occupants must be counted by thousands. 



I have seen them in an evening when they were re- 

 turning to their nests, quite darken the air with their 

 flight, and on one or two occasions, when the turf 

 has been infested more than usually with the larvae of 

 the cockchafer, they have literally blackened a patch of 

 ground about a quarter of a mile square ; and never 

 shall I forget the amazement with which a relative of 

 mine, fresh from a town residence, gazed on their count- 

 less numbers. 



