4330 Birds. 



one, and the bill turned opposite to those of the females. — Alfred Roberts ; King 

 Street, Scarborough, March 10, 1854. 



Castings ejected by Rooks. — On the 17th of April, 1854, while standing beneath 

 the trees in a rookery, I noticed a considerable quantity of matter on the ground round 

 the trunks of the trees, looking very much like dried horse-dung. On examining it 

 closely, I found that it consisted of oval pellets (some entire and some broken) of yel- 

 lowish matter, which had evidently been ejected from the stomachs of the rooks ; 

 castings as they are called. On looking at the materials composing them through a 

 lens, they seemed to consist principally of hard and indigestible vegetable matter, 

 mixed with pieces of the elytra of beetles and small stones. The circumstance which 

 I have here related may be a common one, and rooks may regularly be in the habit of 

 rejecting the indigestible portions of their food, but the fact is new to me, and I can- 

 not find it recorded in any of the works on Ornithology which I have had an oppor- 

 tunity of consulting. It is well known that most birds of prey throw up feathers and 

 bones in the form of castings, and Mr. Yarrell says also, that this habit " is common 

 to the shrikes, the swallows, and most of the insectivorous birds which feed on 

 Coleoptera,"* but he does not say that the rook possesses it. Larvae, worms, and 

 other kinds of soft animal food, being the favourite diet of these birds, is it not pro- 

 bable that the rook may only possess this habit at seasons like the present, when the 

 weather having been exceedingly dry for some time, it is obliged to live chiefly on 

 grain and other vegetable food ? In his ' Observations on Natural History,' the Rev. 

 Leonard Jenyns makes this remark, when speaking of jackdaws building their nests 

 in chimneys, " From the quantity of horse-dung which occasionally falls into the 

 grates beneath where they are at work, I should suppose that they employ this material 

 in some way, perhaps as a lining for their nests,'' (p. 153). With great diffidence I ven- 

 ture to throw a doubt upon the statement of so accomplished a naturalist and accurate 

 an observer, but might not the apparent horse-dung have consisted of castings thrown 

 up by the jackdaws ? for the castings of the rooks bore so close a resemblance at a little 

 distance to that substance, that at first I mistook them for it. Mr. Jenyns says, in 

 another observation (dated April 27th, 1828), "A farmer in this neighbourhood 

 observes that, for about a month at this period of the year, his corn-stacks are more 

 resorted to and attacked by the jackdaws than at any other time, and that he 

 is obliged to employ a boy to keep them off. This circumstance one would suppose 

 must have some connexion with the breeding-season." Rooks may have the same 

 propensity at that season as jackdaws, and the stomachs of both these birds being per- 

 haps unprovided with a gizzard strong enough to grind down the husks and other 

 hard parts of the corn, they may reject them in castings. — R. H. Meade ; Bradford, 

 Yorkshire, April 28,. 1854. 



[See Hewitson's ' Oology,' i. p. 185, where the same fact is recorded, and a refe- 

 rence made to a prior record in Loudon's ' Magazine of Natural History.' It may be 

 further observed that Mr. Hewitson attributes the circumstance to the same cause as 

 Mr. Meade, namely, the unusual dryness of the weather preventing the birds from ob- 

 taining their usual food. — E. N.~\ 



Curious Anecdote of Partridges. — Last spring, according to our usual practice, we 



British Birds,' 2nd edit. Vol. i. p. 40. 





