ROOK 
157 
above. The eggs are also practically indistinguish- 
able, without a sight of the parent bird. It 
generally arrives in the east of England towards the 
end of October, and leaves again in March, but 
the date of these movements, as also the numbers 
in which it comes, depend much upon the severity 
of the weather in its more northern haunts. 
ROOK. 
(Corvus frugilegus.) 
Crow. — The Rook is one of the best-known of 
all our birds, and a well-stocked rookery is one of 
the most typical features of an English village. 
The bird has a marked liking for settling in 
the neighbourhood of human dwellings, probably 
because it gets its living most easily on cultivated 
ground, but rookeries are by no means uncommon 
in deep or isolated woods. The Rooks leave, as a 
rule, their nesting -places at the end of the breeding- 
season, and take up their quarters in large flocks in 
some dense woodland, often miles distant from 
their daily feeding- grounds, to and from which 
they may be seen passing in long streams high in 
air about sunrise and sunset in the autumn and 
winter days. As winter goes on the nests are 
visited more often, and early in February they fall 
