Rooks and Rookeries. By James Small. 177 



1880-1, the rooks actually fed from the boxes along with the 

 sheep (hoggets) on cut turnips. From the farms of Nether- 

 barns, Eink, Fairnalee, Meigle, Caddonlee, Newhall, Kiln- 

 knowe, and Hollybush, all in Lower Selkirkshire, and in all 

 several thousands of acres in extent, I have reports from the re- 

 spective tenants, all of whom state that they have lost consider- 

 ably from the damage done by rooks to their turnips in winter 

 and spring. They eat green- top yellows, but are fonder of 

 swedes. They dig into the bulbs and make pear-shaped holes; 

 and when these fill with water and freeze, the bulbs go down 

 whenever a thaw sets in. 



They also take up clover in several districts ; and do here and 

 there much damage to that plant ; but their end in uprooting it 

 seems to be more to secure grubs than to eat the plant. They 

 do eat of the plant however. 



The rook has also other eating proclivities which makes it any- 

 thing but a favourite with gamekeepers and numerous sports- 

 men ; for over and above eating of what has already been 

 noticed, and of carrion, it annually destroys for its maw large 

 quantities of the eggs of pheasants and partridges and of barn- 

 yard hens that " lay away." Eggs it is most severe on in dry cold 

 weather, when grubs are scarce ; and the egg-season of pheasants 

 and partridges is the season when rooks have young, a time that 

 in a droughty spring presses hard on their industry ; hence 

 their readiness to go a-nesting when grubs are few. I know of 

 several rookeries near game preserves ; where, the keepers have 

 told me repeately, more than half of the game birds were able to 

 bring up broods from the second laying only, the first having been 

 entirely gobbled by the rooks. They generally carry the contents 

 of the eggs in their bill-sack or pouch to their young. 



Eooks are also birds of prey ; but in this position they are 

 somewhat cowardly, as they only prey on almost featherless 

 younglings. They kill in this state the progeny of pheasants, 

 partridges, and a few of the young of such birds as the black- 

 bird and thrush. They also, but seldom, kill small leverets and 

 very young rabbits. They also occasionally attack and injure 

 weakly lambs ; but I do not know personally of a case in which 

 they have killed a lamb. What I have above stated as to the 

 food on which rooks live is from information which was in my 

 possession, either furnished by friends or from my own observa- 

 tions, before I perused the returns received in the schedule already 



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