ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 9 



freedom of running or flying at large in the garden. 

 Many of you have watched with pleasing interest the 

 ways of birds when tending their young. Their never- 

 ceasing and ever-active care is simply delightful to 

 witness ; and, connected with this, in many instances we 

 ourselves might take lessons from these haunters of our 

 woods and fields. For instance, it is a treat to watch 

 an old wary mother-rook learning her young to fly, and 

 brings to one's mind a mother teaching her child to 

 walk. The young rooks are taught to fly one by one. 

 The old bird sits on a twig or branch very close to the 

 nest, and, of course, in full view of the young one about 

 to make its first essay in airy flight. When the old 

 bird is so placed, she utters a low sound and hops on to 

 another near branch, looking and moving in an inviting 

 way, which the young one quite understands. It then, 

 after some hesitation, makes a shaky attempt to hop on 

 to the nearest branch, about a foot from the nest. If 

 successful, the old lady at once hops to it, and almost 

 caresses it. This encourages and gives confidence to the 

 learner. Then a further-out branch is attempted, the 

 parent bird being near and read}^ to help, should a 

 fall-off" be imminent. This goes on from day to day, 

 with an increase in length of hop or flight, until the 

 whole nestful of young can do fairly well for themselves 

 in the way of flying. A more difficult flight to learn, 

 which is also taught by the parent birds, is to dive 

 down through the air from a great height in a very 

 strong wind and alight, each bird on its own rookery 

 tree. It is a fine sight to see this operation, and it 

 generally occurs when the birds return to their rookery 

 after being long afield, and they descend with the 

 velocity of a bolt from a bow. On an early morning 

 in June, I had the pleasure of seeing some old rooks 

 teaching their young to dive. This was on Blackford 

 Hill, Edinburgh. The diving was done from a high 

 altitude, and was carried down past the precipitous cliff 

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