262 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
CHAPTER XIV. 
THE ROOKERY—BUILDING NESTS—-YOUNG BIRDS—ROO K 
SHOOTING—-STEALING ROOKS—ANTICS IN THE AIR— 
MODE OF FLIGHT—-WHITE ROOKS. 
THE city built by the rooks in the elms of the great 
pasture field (the Warren, near Wick farmhouse) is 
divided into two main parts ; the trees standing in 
two. rows, separated by several hundred yards of 
sward. But the inhabitants appear to be all more or 
less related, for they travel amicably in the same 
flock and pay the usual visit to the trees at the same 
hour. Some scattered elms form a line of com- 
munication between the chief quarters, and each has 
one or more nests in it. Besides these, the oaks in 
the hedgerows surrounding the field support a few 
nests, grouped three or four, in close neighbourhood. 
In some trees near the distant ash-copse there are 
more nests whose owners probably sprang from the 
same stock, but were exiled, or migrated, and do not 
hold much communion with the capital. 
In early days men seem to have frequently dug 
their entrenchments or planted their stockades on the 
