BIRDS. 321 



ROOKS. 



ROOKS are continually fighting and pulling each other's nests 

 to pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living in 

 such close community. And yet if a pair offer to build on 

 a single tree, the nest is plundered and demolished at once. 

 Some rooks roost on their nest trees. The twigs which the 

 rooks drop in building supply the poor with brushwood to 

 light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to 

 finish any nests till the rest have completed their building. 

 As soon as they get a few sticks together, a party comes 

 and demolishes the whole. As soon as rooks have finished 

 their nests, and before they lay, the cocks begin to feed the 

 hens, who receive their bounty with a fondling tremulous 

 voice, and fluttering wings, and all the little blandishments 

 that are expressed by the young, while in a helpless state. 

 This gallant deportment of the male is continued through 

 the whole season of incubation. These birds do not pair on 

 trees, nor in their nests, but on the ground in the open 

 fields. 1 



appear to be able to surmount : on the other hand, if we suppose them 

 to pass the winter in a dormant state in this country, concealed in 

 caverns or other hiding places sufficiently guarded from the extreme 

 cold of our winter to preserve their life, and that at the approach of 

 spring they revive from their torpid state and reassume their usual 

 powers of action, it will entirely remove the first difficulty, arising from 

 the storms and tempests they are liable to meet with in their passage ; 

 but how are we to get over the still greater difficulty of their revivi- 

 fication from their torpid state ? What degree of warmth in the tem- 

 perature of the air is necessary to produce that effect, and how it 

 operates on the functions of animal life, are questions not easily 

 answered. 



How could White suppose that Ray named this species the honey 

 buzzard because it fed on honey, when he not only named it in Latin 

 Buteo apivorus sive vespivorus, but expressly says that " it feeds on 

 insects, and brings up its young with the maggots or nymphs of wasps ?" 



That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, some- 

 times feed on insects I have little doubt, and think I have observed the 

 common buzzard to settle on the ground and pick up insects of some 

 kind or other. MARKWICK. 



1 After the first brood of rooks are sufficiently fledged, they all leave 

 their nest trees in the daytime, and resort to some distant place in search 



y 



