33° Nature's Militia 



waged with these three special foes, the farmer has 

 friends — the sparrow again, and the rook, jackdaw, 

 magpie, jay, all the smaller birds of prey, in fact, and 

 many of the larger; and besides these, he has the 

 stoat, weasel, mole and hedgehog, which last, though 

 much persecuted, is most useful, and quite inoffensive. 



The battle about the rook is only less fierce than 

 that about the sparrow, but while it is no doubt true 

 that he does uproot some plants in his search for grubs, 

 that he does steal a little corn, and that, when insects 

 are scarce, or rooks too many, he even attacks the 

 crops, still, where rooks are poisoned, wire-worm 

 increases and crops fail. One rook will have as many 

 as three dozen daddy-grubs or click-beetles in its crop 

 at once, and the birds go over the ground yard by yard 

 in the most systematic manner, working from early 

 dawn till evening, each bird catching, it is said, a-t least 

 fifty wire-worms in the day. 



In some parts of the country the rooks are often 

 joined at their work in the furrows by large flocks of 

 gulls, titmice and others, which appear when ploughing 

 begins, and go away when the furrows are cleared, 

 without taking any pay from the farmer, except in the 

 shape of the insect-food which he is glad to be rid of. 



Other very useful binds, which must be passed 

 over with a mere mention, are the various species of 

 plover, the partridge, and the pheasant — a couple of 

 which will eat 1,500 wire-worms at a meal — the thrush 

 and the landrail, both of which clear the fields of 

 snails and slugs, and the swallow, martin and swift, 

 without whom the air would be so choked with flies as 

 to be simply unbreathable. 



So much, then, for the services, the incalculable 



