Thousands upon Thousands of Wings 229 



army's line of march extends over quite five miles in one 

 unbroken corps. The breadth they occupy in the at- 

 mosphere varies — now twenty yards, now fifty, now a 

 hundred, on an average say fifty yards ; but rooks do not 

 fly very close together, like starlings, and the mass, it may 

 be observed, fly on the same plane. Instead of three or 

 four layers one above the other, the greater number pass 

 by at the same height from the ground, side by side on a 

 level, as soldiers would march upon a road : not meaning, 

 of course, an absolute, but a relative level. This forma- 

 tion is more apparent from an elevation — as it were, up 

 among them — than from below ; and looking along their 

 line towards the distant wood it is like glancing under a 

 black canopy. 



Small outlying parties straggle from the line — now on 

 one side, now on the other ; sometimes a few descend to 

 alight on trees in the meadows, where doubtless their 

 nests were situated in the spring. For it is a habit of 

 theirs months after the nesting is over, and also before it 

 begins, to pay a flying visit to the trees in the evening, 

 calling en route to see that all is well and to assert pos- 

 session. 



The rustling sound of these thousands upon thousands 

 of wings beating the air with slow steady stroke can hardly 

 be compared to anything else in its weird oppressiveness, 

 so to say : it is a little like falling water, but may be best 

 likened, perhaps, to a vast invisible broom sweeping the 

 sky. Every now and then a rook passes with ragged wing 

 — several feathers gone, so that you can see daylight 

 through it ; sometimes the feathers are missing from the 

 centre, leaving a great gap, so that it looks as if the bird 

 had a large wing on this side and on the other two narrow 

 ones. There is a rough resemblance between these and 



