322 CORVIDjE. 



sprattus) from the surface with their bills. They seemed to live 

 for some time almost wholly on these fish, among which there was 

 a "Teat fatality. 



In Scotland, these birds have, by suiting themselves to circum- 

 stances, come under my observation in different ways from what 

 they have done in Ireland. I have for many miles along the coast 

 of Ayrshire met with them in the autumn, feeding among the 

 fresh sea-weed or rejectamenta of the receding tide ; and at other 

 times they were crowded in search of food upon the heaps of sea- 

 weed collected on the beach for manure. About two miles inland 

 from Ballantrae, in Ayrshire, a few hundreds of these birds, in the 

 autumn of 1839, regularly roosted on the ground upon a rising 

 knoll in a pasture-field. I first saw them there at 8 o'clock, p.m., 

 on the 20th of August ; and afterwards, on returning late from 

 grouse-shooting in distant moors, they were always to be seen. 

 This roosting-place was in the midst of a cultivated district, in 

 which there was no wood of sufficient age to be patronized by the 

 rook. 



At the commencement of a snow-storm in England, and 

 after the ground became well covered, I was once amused at 

 seeing a rook rolling in the snow, apparently enjoying itself as 

 much as a Newfoundland dog could have done.* In summer 

 I have met with the rook in Holland, France, and Switzerland, 

 and in some parts of the first-named country have observed it to be 

 as common as at its chief haunts in the British Islands. At the 

 Hotel Bellevue, which is situated close to the king's park at the 

 Hague, I for the first time experienced the evils of a rookery, the 

 cawing from a closely adjacent one being so incessant from day- 

 break, as to drive all sleep from me, unaccustomed as I was to 

 such music ; — this was at the end of May, when the calls of the 

 young are almost constantly uttered. 



The rook has attracted the attention of authors possessing a 

 celebrity of very different kinds. In the Bracebridge Hall of 

 Washington Irving, an admirable chapter is devoted to it. Gold- 



* Waterton, in his Essays on Natural History, mentions a tame raven acting 

 similarly. 



