282 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
The rustling sound of these thousands upon 
thousands of wings beating the air with slow steady 
stroke can hardly be compared to anything else in its. 
weird oppressiveness, so to say: it is a little like 
falling water, but may be best likened, perhaps, to a 
vast invisible broom sweeping the sky. Every now 
and then a rook passes with ragged wing — several: 
feathers gone, so that you can see daylight through 
it ; sometimes the feathers are missing from the cen- 
tre, leaving a great gap, so that it looks as if the bird 
had a large wing on this side and on the other two. 
narrow ones. There is a rough resemblance between. 
these and the torn sails of some of the old windmills. 
which have become dark in colour from long exposure 
to the weather, and have been rent by the storms of 
years. Rooks can fly with gaps of astonishing size in 
their wings, and do not seem much incommoded by 
the loss—caused, doubtless, by a charge of shot in the 
rook-shooting, or by the small sharp splinters of flint 
with which the birdkeepers sometimes load their guns, 
not being allowed to use shot. 
Near their nesting-trees their black feathers may 
be picked up by dozens in the grass ; they beat them 
out occasionally against the small boughs, and some- 
times in fighting. If seen from behind, the wings of 
the rook, as he spreads them and glides, slowly de- 
scending, preparatory to alighting, slightly turn up at 
the edges like the rim of a hat, but much less curved. 
From a distance as he flies he appears to preserve a. 
