THE WARMWELL GATHERING 387 



of them at Warm well, four miles from my old home 

 at Stafford ; the other, the property of the late Mr 

 Mansel-Pleydell, the most delightful of men, a great 

 lover of Nature, and, for many years, President of 

 the Dorset Field Club, at Clenstone, five miles 

 from my present home at Bingham's Melcombe. 



Let me describe the Warmwell gathering. 

 Warmwell is a beautiful old Elizabethan Manor 

 House with a rookery close in front of it. From 

 about an hour before sunset, flock after flock of 

 rooks from Kingston and Came, from Stafford and 

 Lewell, from Tincleton and Moreton, and perhaps 

 a dozen other rookeries, begin to arrive in rapid 

 succession, till the number of the whole amounts to 

 many thousands. They pitch down on a grass 

 field about half a mile from the Manor House, 

 blackening the ground, and are there joined by vast 

 flocks of jackdaws which come in from the white chalk 

 cliffs of the Dorsetshire coast, beginning with White 

 Nose, some four, and stretching on to Lulworth 

 Cove, some eight or ten miles away, the whole of 

 them pitted with their nesting-holes. The solemn 

 cawing of the rooks is thus enlivened with the shrill 

 and cheerful chatter of the jackdaws. Meanwhile, 

 the home rookery of Warmwell, " on hospitable 

 thoughts intent," and quite alive to their responsi- 



