WATCHING ROOKS 293 



report of a gun, the whole troop burst suddenly out 

 of the trees, which were on the outer edge of the 

 plantation, flew a little way over the heath (I caught 

 them against the fading red of the sky), wheeled round, 

 returned, and shot into them again. There was a little 

 cawing as they got back, but this soon sank, and again 

 there was silence. Then, in a moment, there was the 

 same sudden rush of wings, and the whole black cloud 

 shot, like one bird, into the open sky, wheeled again, 

 and shot back, as before. This occurred nine times in 

 succession, at intervals of not longer, I should think, 

 than three or four minutes. In the later rushes the 

 birds circled several times — flying out again, each time, 

 over the moor — before resettling in the trees. After 

 the last time they settled in a different part of the 

 plantation. Immediately before two of the rushes out, 

 I heard a loud 'caw,' in rather a high-pitched tone, 

 from a single rook, which seemed to be the signal 

 for the exodus, whilst, almost immediately afterwards, 

 there was another single note of quite a different 

 character — deeper and more guttural — from either the 

 same or another bird still in the trees, which seemed to 

 call the rest back again. A well understood signal- 

 note indeed, would be the easiest way of accounting 

 for these sudden and extraordinarily simultaneous 

 flights and returns, but it was only twice out of the 

 nine times, that this explanation seemed tenable. On 

 other occasions, the caw, at starting, seemed only one 

 of many, or did not correspond so exactly, in point of 

 time, with the sudden flight out, as the theory seemed 

 to require, whilst the deep 'quaw,' which seemed to 

 be made by one particular rook, who always stayed 

 behind, and which I had at first thought called the 



