280 69 Wald Life in a Southern County. 
CHAPTER XV. 
ROOKS RETURNING TO ROOST——VAST FLOCKS-——-ROOK PAR- 
LIAMENT—THE TWO ROOK ARMIES AND THEIR ROUTES 
—ROOK LAWS, TRADITIONS, AND ANCIENT HISTORY— 
‘THROWS’ OF TIMBER—THIEVING JACKDAWS. 
AS evening approaches, and the rooks begin to wing 
their way homewards, sometimes a great number of 
them will alight upon the steep ascent close under 
the entrenchment on the downs which has been 
described, and from whence the wood and beech trees 
where they sleep can be seen. They do not seem so 
much in search of food, of which probably there is 
not a great deal to be found in the short, dried-up 
herbage and hard soil, as to rest here, half-way home 
from the arable fields. Sometimes they wheel and 
circle in fantastic flight over the very brow of the 
down, just above the rampart ; occasionally, in the 
raw cold days of winter, they perch moping in discon- 
solate mood upon the bare branches of the clumps of 
trees on the ridge. 
After the nesting time is over and they have got 
back to their old habits—which during that period 
