286 «©6©9Wild Life in a Southern County. 
field, at a distance, which to the human eye appears so 
much more suitable, being retired, quiet, and appa- 
rently quite as full of food, is deserted; they scarcely 
‘come near it. The home-field itself is not the attrac- 
tion, because other home-fields are not so favoured. 
The tenacity with which rooks cling to localities 
is often illustrated near great cities where buildings 
have gradually closed in around their favourite haunts. 
Yet on the small waste spots covered with cinders 
and dustheaps, barren and unlovely, the rooks still 
alight; and you may see them, when driven up from 
such places, perching on the telegraph wires over the 
very steam of the locomotives as they puff into the 
Station. 
I think that neither considerations of food, water, 
shelter, or convenience, are always the determining 
factors in the choice made by birds of the spots they 
frequent; for I have seen many cases in which all of 
these were evidently quite put on one side. Birds 
to ordinary observation seem so unfettered, to live 
so entirely without rhyme or reason, that it is difficnlt 
to convey the idea that the precise contrary is really 
the case. 
Returning to these two great streams of rooks, 
which pour every evening in converging currents from 
the north and east upon the wood; why do they do 
this? Why not go forth to the west, or to the south, 
where there are hills and meadows and streams in 
equal number? Why not scatter abroad, and return 
