AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 223 



the great majority of our birds leave our neighbour- 

 hood altogether for some weeks, and whither and 

 why they go is one of the points, above alluded to, 

 upon which " we have yet to learn." Do they visit 

 the seaside for salt air and bathing ] or do they go 

 on a continental tour 1 Be this as it may, it is very 

 certain that our rookeries and favourite rook-roosts, 

 which are by no means always identical, are, com- 

 paratively speaking, deserted till the latter part of 

 July or the beginning of August, when the wanderers 

 return and swarm over our pastures in company with 

 Jackdaws and Starlings. We notice that the main 

 body of our Rooks always return to their roosting- 

 place from the north-east, though many considerable 

 parties flock in also from all points of the compass. 

 About the beginning of October, not only all our 

 home-bred Rooks, but almost all those from the 

 rookeries within, roughly speaking, a radius of some 

 miles, crowd into a wood near this house known as 

 the Lynches, in which many hundreds of these birds 

 are annually bred ; but at the date just mentioned 

 and during the winter few Rooks spend the night in 

 the old bare-topped ash trees in the lower part of the 

 said wood in which the majority of the nests are, 

 fully exposed to our prevalent winds from west and 

 south-west, but cluster in the elms, oaks, and few 

 firs all over the upper portion of the covert. 



In common with most of the Crow family, the 

 Rook is omnivorous, and whilst fully admitting the 

 immense good done by the birds in the destruction 

 of noxious insects, we cannot defend our friends from 

 the charges brought against them, with perfect truth, 

 by farmers and gamekeepers of the damage done by 

 their taste for corn, both in grain and blade, and for 



