178 Rooks and Rookeries. By James Small. 



referred to. Before giving some extracts from these returns I 

 may state shortly a few reasons why I think rooks have of late 

 years somewhat changed in regard to the food on which they 

 live. There are several not unlikely causes why they have got 

 keener of eggs and quarry; and the taste for quarry, which 

 was shown at a much earlier date than the taste for young 

 birds, may have led to the slaughter of the innocents. About 

 fifty years ago most of the cultivated land of the Borders was, 

 broadly speaking, in a natural state, for the manures used were 

 of a kind likely to tend to increasing, rather than otherwise, 

 the number of worms, grubs, and insects on which rooks natur- 

 ally feed. Now, however, from the almost universal use of lime 

 and other quickening manures and stimulants, not a third of the 

 number of grubs and earthworms and slugs are in the soil that 

 there was then, maugre the increased fatness of the land. As a 

 proof of this, let any one examine the furrows when they are 

 being made in a field upon which lime has been somewhat recently 

 laid, and the same in an adjoining field where no lime has been 

 applied. The preponderance of animal life in the shape of earth 

 worms, &c. in the unlimed field will be found to be great. The 

 fact is that lime kills to a large extent both wormlings and the 

 larvae of numerous insects on which rooks feed. Indeed most of 

 the older husbandmen can testify that in some fields where grubs 

 were occasionally little short of a plague before the quickening 

 artificial manures were applied, earth worms and grubs are now 

 but little known. Now, rooks are beyond dispute increased im- 

 mensely in numbers of late years, especially since the gun tax 

 was put in force ; and, as above shown, there is a falling off in 

 their natural food, hence, they have taken to devouring on a 

 pretty extensive scale very valuable farm produce, and, like some 

 less honest bipeds, to "trespass in search of game, for they 

 are omnivorous." It should, however, be remembered in 

 their favour that they are so constituted that they require a por- 

 tion of animal food — worms or otherwise — to maintain proper 

 health. They therefore by instinct hunt up the needful. 



In moderate numbers rooks, in my opinion, would be, as they 

 once were, very usefid birds, the friends of the husbandman, and 

 very little of an enemy to the sportsman ; and something should 

 be done to have their number reduced, otherwise the depreda- 

 tions described will be multiplied, and the country at large will 

 suffer loss. I have shown the different methods by which 



