430 
ROOK. 
*At Baume-la-Roche, a few leagues from Dijon, M. Montbeillard 
saw a colony of Rooks, which he was told had nested for half a cen- 
tury in the holes of the rocks facing- the south-west ; and they were so 
familiar, that they sometimes ventured to steal the reapers’ luncheons. 
From some cause they disappeared, and their place was immediately 
occupied by a party of the hooded crow (^Corvus cornix, Linnjeus.)' 
This, however, is no less anomalous in the case of the Rook, than 
that of the jackdaw nestling- in rabbit burrows. Their usual habit is 
to build in larg-e communities, similar to the herons. Ten or twjelve 
nests are sometimes to be seen on the same tree ; and there are fre- 
quently considerable numbers of trees thus loaded with nests all con- 
tiguous to each other. Schwenckfeld remarks that they commonly 
prefer large trees planted round cemeteries and churchyards ; but 
amongst the numerous rookeries with which I am acquainted, not 
one occurs in such a locality. At Lee, in Kent, on the contrary, 
though there are fine elms close by the churchyard, the neighbouring 
Rooks prefer those around the adjacent mansion-house, lately occupied 
by Lady Dacre, about fifteen or twenty furlongs from the church ; 
while, at a similar distance farther, another more numerous rookery is 
established. Though they usually select tall trees, they do not do so 
in every case ; for I observed, in 1819, a rookery on a clump of 
young oaks in the Duke of Buccleugh’s park, at Dalkeith, near Edin- 
burgh, none of which were above ten or twelve feet high, although they 
could have found abundance of very lofty trees in the beautiful grounds 
around this noble mansion. 
Mr. Jennings mentions another instance, with which also I am 
personally acquainted, of a rookery established on trees of inferior 
height, in the garden of the Royal Naval Asylum, at Greenwich, 
although there are many fine lofty elms in the park hard by, upon 
which not a single rook’s nest is to be seen. He thinks it not impro- 
bable, that they have been influenced in their selection by the noise of 
the boys in the play-ground of the Asylum.^ At Dalkeith, however, 
I may remark, that the rookery on the low oaks was in the most 
silent and sequestered part of the park. 
Rooks appear to be partial to the metropolis ; for, besides the old 
rookery in the Temple Gardens, which has been (if we mistake not) 
long- abandoned, there was an extensive one in the gardens of Carlton 
Palace, which, in consequence of the trees having been cut down, re- 
‘ Oiseaux, Art. Le Freux. 
^ Ornithologia, p. 76. 
