158 HISTORY OF 



as has been remarked, argues him ingenious and crafly. He 

 builds in steeples, old castles, and high rocks, laying five or six 

 eggs in a season. The Cornish chough is like a jackdaw, but 

 bigger, and almost the size of a crow. The bill, feet, and legs, 

 are long like those of a jackdaw, but of a red colour ; and the 

 plumage is black all over. It frequents rocks, old castles, and 

 churches by the sea side, like the daw ; and with the same noisy 

 assiduity. It is only seen along the western coasts of England. 

 These are birds very similar in their manners, feeding on grain 



well get rid of; but multitudes of small roots are so interwoven with the 

 pasture herbage, that we cannot separate them without injury ; aud these 

 our persevering rooks stock up for us in such quantities, that in some sea 

 dons tlie fields are strewed with the eradicated plants. The whole so torn 

 up does not exclusively prove to be the hair-grass, but infinitively the largi-r 

 portion consists of this injurious plant. The object of the bird in perform- 

 ing this service for us, is to obtain the larvae of several species of insects, 

 underground feeders, that prey on the roots, as Linnaeus long ago observed 

 upon the subject of the little nard grass {nardus stricta). This benefit is 

 partly a joint operation : the grub eats the root, but not often so effectually 

 as to destroy tlie plant, which easily roots itself anew ; but the rook finishes 

 the affair by pulling it up to get at the larv*, and thus prevents all vegeta- 

 tion ; nor do I believe that the bird ever removes a specimen that has not 

 already been eaten, or commenced upon, by the caterpillar. 



The rook entices its young from the breeding trees, as soon as they ran 

 flutter to any other. These young, for a few evenings after their flight, 

 will return with their parents, and roost where they were bred ; but they 

 ^80on quit their abode, and lemain absent the whole of the summer months. 

 As soon, however, as the heat of summer is subdued, and the air of autumn 

 felt, they return and visit their forsaken habitations, and some few of them 

 even commence the repair of their shattered nests ; but this meeting is very 

 differently conducted from that in the spring ; their voices have nnw a 

 melloAvness approaching to musical, with little admixture of that harsh and 

 noisy contention, so distracting at the former season, and seems more like a 

 grave consultation upon future procedure ; and as winter approaches they 

 depart for some other place. The object of this meeting is unknown j 

 nor are we aware that any other bird revisits the nest it has once forsaken. 

 Domestic fowls, indeed, make nse again of their old nests ; but this is never, 

 or only occasionally done by birds in a wild state. The daw and rock pigeon 

 will build in society with their separate kindred ; and the former even re- 

 visits in autumn the places it had nestled in. But such situations as these 

 birds require, the ruined castle, abbey, or church tower, ledge in the rock, 

 &c., are not universally found, and are apparently occupied from necessity. 

 The rooks appear to associate from preference to society, as trees are com. 

 mon every where ; but what motive they can have in view in lingering 

 thus for a few autumnal mornings, and counselling with each other aroun t 

 thp'\T abandoned and now tiseless nests, which before the retiu'n of spring 

 we ganerally beaten from the trees, is by no means manifest to us. 



