jDinns, 
321 
ROOKS. 
Rooks are continually fighting and pulling each other's nests 
to pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living in 
such close community. And yet if a pair ofier to build on 
a single tree, the nest is plundered and demolished at once. 
Some rooks roost on their nest trees. The twigs which the 
rooks drop in building supply the poor with brushwood to 
light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to 
finish any nests till the rest have completed their building. 
As soon as they get a few sticks together, a party comes 
and demolishes the whole. As soon as rooks have finished 
their nests, and before they lay, the cocks begin to feed the 
hens, who receive their bounty with a fondling tremulous 
voice, and fluttering wings, and all the little blandishments 
that are expressed by the young, while in a helpless state. 
This gallant deportment of the male is continued through 
the whole season of incubation. These birds do not pair on 
trees, nor in their nests, but on the ground in the open 
fields.^ 
appear to be able to surmount : on the other hand, if we suppose thern^ 
to pass the winter in a dormant state in this country, concealed in 
caverns or other hiding j)]aces sufficiently guarded from the extreme 
cold of our w^inter to preserve then* life, and that at the approach ot 
spring they revive from their torpid state and reassume their usual 
powers of action, it will entirely remove the first difficulty, arising from 
the storms and tempests they are liable to meet with in their passage ; 
but how are we to get over the still greater difficulty of then- revivi- 
fication from then' torpid state ? What degree of warmth in the tem- 
perature of the air is necessary to produce that effect, and how it 
operates on the functions of animal life, are questions not easily 
answered. 
How could White suppose that Ray named this species the honey 
buzzard because it fed on honey, when he not only named it in Latin 
Buteo apivorus sive vespivoj^us, bat expressly says that " it feeds on 
insects, and brings up its young with the maggots or nymphs of wasps 
That birds of prey, when in want of their proper food, flesh, some- 
times feed on insects I have little doubt, and think I have observed tlic 
common buzzard to settle on the ground and pick up insects of sonic 
kind or other. — Makkwick. 
^ After the first brood of rooks are sufficiently, fledged, they aU leave- 
their nest trees in the daytime, and resort to some distant place in search 
