In Farm and Garden. 159 



which were in some cases surrounded by orchards 

 and old-fashioned gardens. We have only to add 

 that large woods adjoined here and there, together 

 with smaller plantations and shrubberies in some of 

 which rookeries were established, and also that 

 gamekeepers were absent and much of the sur- 

 rounding property was unpreserved as regards game, 

 to complete the brief description of an ideal haunt 

 for wild birds. Unfortunately we lived long enough 

 near this avine paradise to see much of it destroyed, 

 turned over to the builder, and bird-life banished. 

 Those who remember the quaint old village of 

 Heeley (now, alas!. a suburb of Sheffield) in the days 

 before the railway, when the mail-coach passed 

 through twice a day and caused the only commotion, 

 when the old flour-mill driven by water, with its tree- 

 surrounded dam, stood where the railway-station 

 does now, may perhaps recall the matchless sylvan 

 beauty of Meersbrook, the Banks, and the old hall at 

 Norton Lees. Much of it now has been transformed 

 into a wilderness of bricks and mortar. There are 

 many other similar spots about the northern shires 

 in which the annual cycle of bird-life is much the 

 same at least we have found it so and in the 

 present chapter we propose to outline some of its 

 most salient features. 



Perhaps the most familiar birds of the open fields, 

 especially in spring, are the Rooks. They may be 



