ROOKS. 263 
delight. Any insect-eating bird would do the same ; and there- 
fore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr. Ray should 
call one species of buzzard huteo apworus sive vespivorus, or the 
honey buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be 
found in one of their nests. The combs were conveyed thither 
doubtless for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, and not for 
their honey : since none is to be found in the combs of wasps. 
Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects ; thus have I seen a 
tame kite picking up the female ants full of eggs with much 
satisfaction.* 
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 offer 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 nest 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 hare finished their nests, and before they lay, the 
cocks begin to feed the hens, who receive their bounty with a 
* That redstarts, flycatchers, blackcaps, and other slender-billed insectivorous small birds, 
particularly the swallow tribe, make their first appearance very early in the spring, is a well- 
known fact ; though the flycatcher is the latest of them all in its visit (as this accurate naturalist 
observes in another place), for it is never seen before the month of May. If these delicate crea- 
tures come to us from a distant country, they will probably be exposed in their passage, as Mr. 
White justly remarks, to much greater difficulties from storms and tempests than their feeble 
powers appear to be able to surmount : on the other hand, if we suppose them to pass the winter 
in a dormant state in this country concealed in caverns or other hiding places sufficiently guarded 
from the extreme cold of our winter to preserve their life, and that at the approach of 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 their revivification from their 
torpid state ? What degree of warmth in the temperature of the air is necessary to produce that 
eff"ect, and how it operates on the functions of animal life, are questions not easily answered. 
How could Mr. 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 et vespivorus, but 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, sometimes feed on insects I have 
little doubt, and think I have observed the common buzzard (falco buleo) to settle on the ground 
and pick up insects of some kind or other. — Markwick. 
The common buzzard and tawney hooter (aluco stridula) are particularly insectivorous ; and 
the kestrel falcon has also been seen to catch chafl'ers on a summer evening, feeding upon them 
while on the wing; abetter name for the honey buzzard is the common pern {pemis vulgaris) t 
now that several are known possessing the same characters. — Ed. 
