230 
CORVIDiE. 
Mr. Apperley, who farmed a property attached to one 
of the largest rookeries in this country, at Bilton Hall, 
near Rugby, thus witnesses in their favour : “ So large, 
indeed, is this rookery, as to have given the name of 
‘ Bilton Rook Feast' to a kind of wake held in the vil¬ 
lage at the time the young birds are considered fit to eat. 
Independent of the climbers, the gamekeepers of several 
neighbouring gentlemen used to attend with their guns; 
and I have known upwards of a hundred dozen birds 
taken of a morning. I am, however, enabled to say that, 
numerous as these birds were, I never found injury from 
them to my crops.” 
Rooks seem greatly to prefer those trees which are 
lofty, and near some dwelling. At times they, however, 
deviate rather whimsically from their usual habits. There 
are several instances of their building in trees of a lower 
growth, as in the case of a rookery mentioned by Mr. Ren¬ 
nie, in the Duke of Buccleuclfis grounds at Dalkeith, 
where they built in young oak-trees, none of which 
were more than ten or twelve feet high, although large 
trees were abundant in the neighbourhood. 
There are a few trees in one of the streets in Newcastle, 
which have long been crowned by the nests of these 
birds; but during the spring of 1832, several pairs, dis¬ 
senting from some of the proceedings of their neighbours, 
left their ancestral trees, and built their nests amongst 
the smoky chimneys of the nearest houses. But, per¬ 
haps, the most remarkable instance in ornithological 
architecture is that mentioned by Bewick of the pair of 
Rooks which, for ten successive years, built their nest 
and reared their young ones on the weather-cock of the 
Exchange spire, turning about with every change of wind. 
The nest of the Rook is built of sticks cemented with 
clay, mixed with tufts of grass, and is lined with roots. 
