430 



ROOK. 



*At Baume-la-Roche, a few leagues from Dijon, M. Montbeillard 

 saw a colony of Rooks, which he was told had nested for half a cen- 

 tury in the holes of the rocks facing- the south-west ; and they were so 

 familiar, that they sometimes ventured to steal the reapers' luncheons. 

 From some cause they disappeared, and their place was immediately 

 occupied by a party of the hooded crow (Corvus comix, Linnjeus.) 1 



This, however, is no less anomalous in the case of the Rook, than 

 that of the jackdaw nestling- in rabbit burrows. Their usual habit is 

 to build in large communities, similar to the herons. Ten or twelve 

 nests are. sometimes to be seen on the same tree ; and there are fre- 

 quently considerable numbers of trees thus loaded with nests all con- 

 tiguous to each other. Schwenckfeld remarks that they commonly 

 prefer large trees planted round cemeteries and churchyards ; but 

 amongst the numerous rookeries with which I am acquainted, not 

 one occurs in such a locality. At Lee, in Kent, on the contrary, 

 though there are fine elms close by the churchyard, the neighbouring 

 Rooks prefer those around the adjacent mansion-house, lately occupied 

 by Lady Dacre, about fifteen or twenty furlongs from the church ; 

 while, at a similar distance farther, another more numerous rookery is 

 established. Though they usually select tall trees, they do not do so 

 in every case ; for I observed, in 1819, a rookery on a clump of 

 young oaks in the Duke of Buccleugh's park, at Dalkeith, near Edin- 

 burgh, none of which were above ten or twelve feet high, although they 

 could have found abundance of very lofty trees in the beautiful grounds 

 around this noble mansion. 



Mr. Jennings mentions another instance, with which also I am 

 personally acquainted, of a rookery established on trees of inferior 

 height, in the garden of the Royal Naval Asylum, at Greenwich, 

 although there are many fine lofty elms in the park hard by, upon 

 which not a single rook's nest is to be seen. He thinks it not impro- 

 bable, that they have been influenced in their selection by the noise of 

 the boys in the play-ground of the Asylum. 2 At Dalkeith, however, 

 I may remark, that the rookery on the low oaks was in the most 

 silent and sequestered part of the park. 



Rooks appear to be partial to the metropolis ; for, besides the old 

 rookery in the Temple Gardens, which has been (if we mistake not) 

 long abandoned, there was an extensive one in the gardens of Carlton 

 Palace, which, in consequence of the trees having been cut down, re- 



1 Oiseaux, Art. Le Freux. 2 Ornithologia, p. 76. 



