314 
CORVIDAE. 
new nest was then commenced, contiguous to, but not at the same 
place as the former one. The twice-married crows and magpies 
here, always proved too wary to be shot. 
Mr. Yarrell observes, that “ more than two are seldom seen 
associated together, except when food is to be obtained.” But at 
all seasons of the year, I have seen them, occasionally to the num- 
ber of fifteen, associating together in little troops on the shore 
of Belfast bay, when there was no apparent cause for their meeting ; 
and when there has been such in the inland neighbourhood, so many 
as seventeen have been reckoned on a single tree. . In a rabbit 
warren, at the wild peninsula of the Horn, in the north-west of 
the county of Donegal, I once, on the 27th of June, saw forty 
of these birds in a dense flock. They cannot, like jackdaws, be 
considered as native inhabitants of large towns, but on the 3rd of 
April, and several previous mornings, some years ago, seven or 
eight of them frequented an old garden in the town of Belfast : 
one or two were occasionally to be seen perched on the back 
of a cow kept there. A gentleman living at Springvale, had a 
pet grey crow which followed him about the place, and when not 
so engaged, went sometimes to feed with its brethren on the 
shore. When whistled for, it hurried back to its master. 
In the middle of May, I met with this species about the Yalley 
of Sweet Waters, near Constantinople, and, at the beginning of 
June, in the islands of Delos and Paros. 
THE ROOK. 
Corvus frugilegus , Linn. 
Is as common throughout the cultivated and wooded 
parts of Ireland, as in any other country. 
This bird is generally looked upon by the farmer as an arch enemy, 
of whose deeds he has ocular demonstration,— -the evil that it 
does being apparent in the headless stalks of grain, while its 
virtues do not in a direct manner come under his cognizance. 
The rook has always seemed to me a bird intended by its Creator 
to check the undue increase of insects most injurious to the vege- 
