52 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 



to colonise. Then came the Empress ; and promptly 

 the rooks came also. Soon a flourishing rookery was 

 established. Perhaps the new-comers, too, were exiles. 



Though May is still the month of rook-shooting, this 

 sport has passed out of fashion, and rook-pie is no 



longer an honourable dish it has sunk, in- 

 Rook-Pie , . J , ,. . , . , 



deed, into a place of disrepute from which 



no amount of steak, seasoning, and hard-boiled eggs 

 can rescue it. In old times a dozen rooks would 

 be sent and received with compliments, like a brace of 

 pheasants ; and labourers prized a few rooks as much 

 as the charity beef at Christmas. But now one might 

 search far before finding a cottager who would deign 

 to eat rook-pie. The rooks are shot and buried, or are 

 left where they fall beneath the rookery trees, for foxes 

 to find and carry to their cubs. 



The farmer and the gamekeeper have a common 

 cause against the rooks, which, when they are not 

 attacking the interests of the one are pilfering the 

 produce of the other. An April blizzard consoles the 

 keeper for the pheasants' eggs it ruins by blotting out 

 a generation of rooks. For when such a disaster over- 

 takes a rookery late in April, as young birds are nearly 

 ready to leave the nests, the parent birds are hardly 

 likely to make another attempt to rear a brood. But 

 when rooks' eggs are frosted before or during hatching 

 there will be late broods, not hatched until the trees 



