Burton: Notes on Rooks. 147 



ior food or not, it is clearly a point of honour with them to 

 strip the tree every year. 



Rooks in general avoid the near presence of man. In the 

 winter, however, when the ground is frozen hard or the land 

 buried in snow, they will venture to approach the food put out 

 for the starving birds, using, however, the greatest caution 

 in doing so. I have seldom, even in the worst seasons, seen a 

 rook near my windows, but they will sit on the branches of 

 the trees near the food, and if a piece of bread or anything 

 falls to the ground they will make a dash for it and carry it off. 

 I have seen them sometimes fly close past the stage on which 

 the food is placed, and either seize a piece or knock it off with 

 their wings, and then pick it up. They will also fly after a bird 

 carrying off food in its beak and force it to drop it. In the 

 early mornings too, when no one is about, they will take away 

 the small bones hung out for the Tits. In fact, they steal and 

 bully whenever they can. 



The following is an account of the most extraordinary event 

 in the social economy of these birds that I ever met with. The 

 crest of the steep escarpment on the east of Gainsborough, 

 already alluded to, was cut through in the old coaching days 

 to lower the gradient and reduce the slope ; the spoil being 

 banked up on the road below, thus raising it up considerably 

 above the fields on its north side. Walking down this road 

 one day, I saw through the hedgerow in one of the fields, a 

 large circle of rooks assembled on the grass, several deep, all 

 with their heads turned towards the centre where one solitary 

 bird was standing. The circle, I should say, was about thirty 

 feet in diameter. Presently, out stepped an old bird from the 

 ring, and with that half-walk, half-flight motion, common to 

 some of the larger birds, went up to the rook in the middle, 

 and attacked it with its beak, stabbing it on the head for about 

 a minute, after which, suddenly the whole body of the birds 

 rose up and flew away leaving the victim alone in the centre. 

 It was not dead, and it tried to stand, supporting itself with its 

 wings ; in which way, falling and stumbling as it moved off, 

 it managed to reach the opposite hedge, w^hich was not far 

 off, and I saw no more of it. The gate leading into the field 

 was some distance off, and I had no time to spare. The 

 victim, judging from the size of the old rook which stepped 

 out to kill it, appeared to be a young bird, one perhaps of the 

 first year, inexperienced in rook law. 



igrg April i. 



