146 



NOTES ON ROOKS. 



F. M. BURTON, F.L.S.,F.G.S. 



Rooks are unusually abundant in the Gainsborougn neigh- 

 bourhood, and, in one way or another, are always in evidence 

 from early morning until darkness sets in at night ; so that 

 opportunities for observation are numerous. Within a radius 

 of about a mile from my house, and, for the most part within 

 half that distance, there are, at least, twenty separate rookeries, 

 big and little ; most of them on the slope of the Keuper escarp- 

 ment above Gainsborough facing west, and so protected from 

 the cutting easterly winds so common in this district. 



W'Tien the nesting period is well over, and during the winter 

 months, all the birds roost in woods on the east of the town, 

 repairing there from the low lands of the Trent valley, their 

 favourite feeding-place, in large or small flocks, with a solitary 

 straggler here and there bringing up the rear as the day closes 

 in ; and in the mornings, when daylight returns, they all fly 

 back with loud cawings, to feed in the valley again or on the 

 newly turned-up plough lands. In addition to the worms and 

 grubs of the marshes and plough-lands, anything in the shape 

 of a nut has a special attraction for them ; and they will strip 

 a tree year after year, when once they find it out. I have 

 several solitary walnut trees in the fields around my house, 

 and long before the nuts are ripe and ready to be gathered, the 

 rooks carry them off. I have seen a tree black with these 

 marauders, and have watched the birds flying off with the nuts 

 in their beaks. For a long time I could not make out what they 

 did with them, until one day, on digging into a heap of soil 

 left ready for the garden, some of the nuts turned up. The 

 rooks had learnt that the thick, green coating of walnuts, if 

 buried in the ground, will come off ; and though the nuts by 

 this process are not properly ripe, indeed far from it, I have 

 been obl ged to take a lesson from the rooks and follow their 

 example, on the principle of * half a loaf being better than 

 no bread.' It is not only the walnuts that they steal, but any- 

 thing suggestive of a nut as well. I have a Turkey Oak on m}^ 

 lawn, the fruit of which, with its rough bristly protection, is 

 regularly attacked by the rooks. Some of the acorns ma-y be 

 carried off and eaten, but, at all events, the greater part is 

 thrown down, and left lying under the tree ; and, whether good 



Naturalist 



