278 BIRD WATCHING 



trees near. They fly by relays, and from the farthest 

 part of the troop — that is to say, from that part which 

 is farthest distant from the woods where they are to 

 roost. First one band of birds and then another rises 

 from the outer extremity, flies over the rest, ascending 

 gradually, and wings its way to the trees. By these 

 successive flights the assemblage is a good deal 

 shrunk, and does not cover nearly so much ground, 

 when the remainder — still an enormous number — rise 

 like a black snowdrift whirled by the wind into the 

 air, and circle in a dark cloud, now hardly visible in 

 the darkening sky, above the roosting-trees, with a 

 wonderful babel of cries and noise of wings. 



" At 4.40 this deep musical sound of innumerable 

 crying, cawing, clamouring throats is still continuing, 

 and once, I think, the birds rise from the trees into 

 which they have sunk, and circle round them again. 

 Now they are in the trees once more, but the lovely 

 cawing murmur — the hum, as though rooks were 

 rooky bees — still goes on. 



" 4.47. — It is sinking now. Much more subdued and 

 slumberous, deliciously soothing, a rook lullaby. 



''December nth. — A stern winter's day, the earth 

 lightly snow - covered, but bright and fine in the 

 morning. At 3 P.M. I am where the rooks roost, a 

 plantation of fir-trees — larches— dark, gloomy and 

 sombre, with a path, piercing them like a shaft of 

 light, over -arched with their boughs, silvered now 

 with light snow-wreaths. Just in this gloomy patch 

 they sleep, but with a light belt of smaller firs opposite, 

 or with adjoining woods of oak and beech they will 

 have nothing to do, leaving these latter to the wood- 

 pigeons. 



