G. HOOPER—-birds: their rests and habits. 
105 
from conflicting claims for building-sites and the distribution of 
building-materials. A pair never leave their nest together, one 
remains on guard, whilst the other brings sticks and materials for the 
nest, which in the absence of both would certainly be appropriated. 
They are narrow-minded, too, and object strongly to any extension 
of their colony beyond the prescribed limits of the rookery. If an 
enterprising young couple begin to build in a tree beyond the 
limits, a mob of their conservative companions will sometimes 
attack the nest and tear it down. Perseverance, however, meets 
its reward, and though the nest may be destroyed more than once, 
it is eventually completed, and the next year, and thenceforth, the 
tree will be fully occupied, and the area of the rookery extended. 
Their constitution is like that of our American cousins, a Republic 
“ tempered with petty larceny.” 
Birds, although not gregarious, indeed, affecting isolation in their 
habits, are brought together in considerable numbers by community 
of interest and the calls of hunger. Fifty or sixty years ago, when 
a dead beast was not utilised as now for sausages or any other 
purpose, I have seen scores of kites, buzzards, ravens, crows, and 
magpies, feasting on the carcase of what once had been a horse or a 
cow, or sitting with drooping wings and distended crops on the 
neighbouring trees, pending the process of digestion. 
Thanks to the persecution of many of our most beautiful, and, 
in some cases, useful birds, and the inhospitable reception accorded 
to strange visitants, numerous birds, formerly included in the 
British Fauna, have become practically extinct; the kite, the 
buzzard, the harrier, the bittern, all of which were in my young 
days common enough, and are indigenous birds, come under the 
above category ; whilst the visits of our former occasional visitants 
the roller, the bee-eater, and the hoopoe are now never recorded. 
About the latter beautiful bird there is a legend current in the 
East. It is said that when Mahomet was wandering in the desert 
and fainting under the intolerable heat of the sun, a flock of these 
birds hovered over him, and, whilst fanning him with their wings, 
protected him from the glare. As a recompense Mahomet gave 
them golden crowns, a fatal gift, for the birds were hunted down 
for their sake and persecuted, until at their request the crowns of 
gold were changed into the beautiful tufts of feathers they now 
wear. 
A favourite bird of mine, one not nearly so plentiful as formerly, 
is the kingfisher. This is a mythological bird. When my young 
friends take to classics, as I hope they will, they may read the 
history of the kingfisher in Ovid’s “ Metamorphoses.” Alcyone 
was the wife of Ceyx ; walking by the sea-shore she found his dead 
body cast up by the waves. Her grief was so immoderate that 
the gods, taking compassion on her, changed her and her defunct 
husband into kingfishers, or halcyons. It was fabled that they 
built their nest on the sea, and that whilst incubation was going 
on no storms vexed the deep; there was a period of perfect calm, 
hence called “ halcyon days.” The kingfisher, like the sand-martin, 
