A CITY OF BIRDS 65 



brood scampering aftex the flies, and they retire under 

 a branch overhanging the water. The royal tyrants 

 pass on their way, and out come the households of the 

 humbler citizens to pursue the daily round. 



In the old elms lining the banks of the moat, in the 

 holes of which blue-tits, wrens and starlings nest, the 

 rooks are putting the finishing touches to their houses 

 on April 1st, and the hens are begirming to sit. Both 

 sexes assist in the furnishing, the cock-bird arriving 

 with a twig, presenting it to the hen, and then jumping 

 eagerly into the nest to help her place it in position. 

 In wet weather the rookery is not half so gay, the 

 birds sitting motionless and silent on the branches, 

 occasionally shaking the rain off their feathers. The 

 daws which mingle with the rooks in the fields never 

 use the rookery elms as perching places unless the 

 rooks are all away, which very rarely happens. 



These daws had an evening market-place on the 

 top of a large plane opposite the rookery and on the 

 other side of the moat. Suddenly from fifty to sixty 

 birds detach themselves from the cathedral tower and 

 settle on the plane. There they sit silent for a while, 

 until without apparent reason a storm of emotion rushes 

 through them and they burst into a loud chorus of 

 metallic voices. But sometimes this emotionalism takes 

 a different form. Without being in any way alarmed 

 or disturbed, they all at once leave the tree simultaneously, 

 advance in a solid column over the tops of the rookery 

 elms, stop dead in the air, and, separating into two 

 wings, fly back upon the plane. Then the same thing 

 occurs again, and so may do half a dozen times. The 

 instantaneousness of these cries and movements, the 

 discipline of the short flight and the concerted action 

 seemed inexplicable to me except by the theory of 

 telepathic communication, evolved out of centuries of 

 social intercourse, for I could detect no signs of leader- 

 ship. A tidal wave of emotion does sweep over them ; 

 a call to leave the tree does summon them, not in singles 

 or small parties, but the whole body, and the one is 

 unseen, the other unheard. Another thought-provoking 

 circumstance was that though the birds were then swept 



5 



