Richard Jefferies on Rooks. 10') 



overrun your woods. They sit swinging and cawing on each 

 projecting bough that commands a jirospect. They walk the 

 slopes of your fields, one eye closely scanning the soil for 

 insects, the other sweeping all the points of the compass. 

 Nothing escapes their observation. When they see you out 

 for an object they follow you and mark each movement. We 

 have very little doubt they speedily learn to suspect your 

 intention, and when they see you stoop in a likely spot 

 they fly down to institute an investigation, whenever your 

 back is turned. In no other way can we possibly account 

 for the wholesale wreck of eggs that had been spared and sat 

 upon until you visited them in your walk. And if you doubt 

 who are the culprits, try the ordeal by taste, and strychnine 

 a nestful of eggs. You will find the bodies of the black 

 delinquents strewed round the fragments of the shells. 



" Nothing can be prettier than the broods of young 

 pheasants as they are hatched oS, tame as chickens — although 

 more graceful and active — running from the shell, and be- 

 ginning forthwith to peck about for a living. Unfortunately 

 there are other members of tlie animated creation who watch 

 their growth and their movements with even keener and more 

 immediate interest than yourself. For some four months to 

 come you mean neither to shoot nor eat your confiding 

 proteges ; but they are surrounded by sharp-set carnivora 

 who propose themselves that pleasure on the earliest possible 

 opportunity. We do not assert that those nuisances the 

 rooks are dangerous in this stage of the pheasant breeding, 

 although we should deem it imprudent to trust them too far. 

 And there a weasel is watching, popping his head at intervals 

 out of different holes in the neighbouring bank, undeterred 

 by the fate of several of his family, who have already been 

 trapped there and gibbeted. But more dangerous than hawk 

 or weasel are the jackdaws. For, as these vociferous birds 

 bear comparatively respectable characters, they are more 

 hkely to be indulged with a hcence they abuse. We know 

 them to be bavards : we cannot deny the family tendency to 



