Rooks and Rookeries. By James Small. 175 



of the extra damage done since those birds became so numerous, 

 to farm produce and the eggs and young of game birds ; but of 

 this more hereafter. 



Query No 6 in the schedule sent out was as follows : " What 

 kind of food do rooks eat ? State particularly whether in your 

 neighbourhood you know them to eat bulbs of turnips or clover ; 

 and whether you know of their preying on the eggs or the young 

 of partridges, pheasants, or other birds. State also whether you 

 have known them to injure young lambs." 



I have received such copious replies to this ; and nearly all of 

 them made from personal observation by the writers, that a small 

 volume could be filled by them. I must of necessity abridge 

 largely. At same time I shall state facts sufficient to show be- 

 yond all question the kinds of food on which rooks chiefly live, 

 and also the different sorts of food on which they occasionally 

 feed at certain seasons of the year, and in certain states of the 

 weather. 



Gesner writes of the rook as a corn-eating bird; and Mr 

 ■Knapp in his delightful work the Journal of a Naturalist speaks 

 of it as a grub or worm devouring bird, and most writers con- 

 sider it a bird that partakes of both grain and grubs. 



My opinion, formed from observations extending over a long 

 number of years, with excellent opportunities for watching their 

 ways, is that rooks are omnivorous, but that they prefer as food 

 before all grain or vegetable matter, grubs of aU kinds, and slugs 

 and earth worms. Wire worms, spiders, and all the beetle tribe, 

 together with their larvae and eggs are ever being hunted after 

 by those birds. When grain is in plenty in the fields it is 

 almost never touched provided a supply of the grubs indicated 

 are to be had ; and in summer and autumn grubs as a rule are 

 always to be had in fair abundance, unless in places where rooks 

 are so very numerous as to prove a pest. Observing husband- 

 men have long known that rooks do a vast amount of good by 

 hunting up and devouring the many kinds of grubs that infest 

 the land and destroy its produce ; but they are, of course, also 

 aware that where the birds are excessively numerous they prey 

 at times heavily on the valuable produce of the land. They 

 must of necessity eat ; and when in such large numbers they 

 find the supply of their favourite food short, they will in such 

 circumstances prey on anything edible. In the cold dry early 

 spring weather they prey to some extent on grain when it is 



