ROOKS.
WHEREVER there is a rookery, all over the country, the next two months will be a busy and interesting time. The birds have already come back and have begun operations, which at first are apt to be somewhat desultory. If the weather takes a turn for the worse, it seems to give the builders a check and make them lose heart. If a very fine, sunny, spring-like day arrives, they become over-excited, and make so much noise that they seem not to settle down to their work steadily. But unless it is one of those intoxicating days, they give themselves up to the work of nest-building or nest-repairing with a will. The old nests that have survived the winter storms are evidently considered a vantage-ground worth fighting for, but the kind of fighting in which rooks engage is peculiar to themselves. There is little fierceness or ferocity in it, no bloodshed, no pursuit of the vanquished, not much use of beak or claw, but a prolonged series of scuffles and scrimmages not unlike those in Rugby football. There is plenty of thrusting with side and with shoulder, and some treading down of those that get on the under side, but not apparently much illwill or spite ; only a fixed determination to have the nest and hold it against all comers. Perhaps this good-natured, Yorkshire kind of fighting is because it is only for a nest, and not for the lady who will presently sit in it. Possibly, even, it may be only the hen rooks that scuffle ; for there is no English bird in which for the casual observer it is so difficult to discern any difference between the cock and the hen. But in windy parts of the country it often happens that a good many new nests have to be built, and that only a few couples can have the advantage of an old one to start with. When once these preliminary questions are over, and the work of collecting sticks begins, it is amusing to see their methods of doing it.
Sometimes they set about breaking off living twigs from the elms or sycamores, and many a twist and tug they have to give before the separation is effected. More often they pick up any sticks there may be lying about, but they weigh them and try them in various positions before deciding to fly up with them to the trees. Whether they try the strength, or flexibility, or shape, or weight is not very clear. If they fix on a small one, they will often go and get another and then pick up the first as well. When they carry a long and rather heavy one they seem to toil and drag in the air, not unlike a ship labouring with a contrary wind.
One curious feature in their business is the very large number of sticks which they let drop under the nests them- selves. Do they drop them by accident or clumsiness, or are they discarded as unsuitable when tried in the position where they are to go ? It may be an indication of the latter alter- native that no rook ever flies down after the fallen sticks to recover them under the tree, so that by the end of the building time a gardener or stick-gatherer may go and wheel away several barrowloads that will be useful enough for lighting fires, for it will be found that the greater part of these leavings are dry and dead, and all the better, therefore, to kindle quickly. It is worthy of remark that not only do the old birds refuse ever to pick up any of their dropped sticks, but when some unlucky young one falls down and is unable to fly they leave it to its fate and make no ado over it; though when the young ones leave the nest in the ordinary course and settle in the fields a little away from the trees, the parent birds will feed them for a while, and attend upon them till their power to fend for themselves is developed.
The never coming down under their own trees is perhaps part of an instinct of wariness that leads them to feel safer out in the open ; but when they are collecting sticks they do not mind coming near houses and on to lawns, which they only do otherwise in hard weather when food is scarce. During these near approaches, if it chance to be a sunshiny day, one can see the beautiful sheen on their black—or should we not say their purple-black ?—feathers ; and then, too, one can perceive the curious expression which, more than most birds, rooks have on their face. Their great beaks look something of the colour and roughness of a horse's fetlock ; and they move about with an unbirdlike tread and an almost massive deportment, behaving like dignified strangers, though so near your dwelling, and showing a certain awkwardness of movement which does not destroy, though it lessens, their dignity. They make you smile, but not laugh, at their quaint figures, and you are sorry when they depart, which they soon will do. When once their families are reared and well on the wing no more will be seen or heard of them in their old haunt until the end of September, when they have gathered into vast parliaments and assemble in their thousands in one field after another. At that time of year they are seized with strange spirits which make them whirl in the air in the most extraordinary feats of flight. Sometimes one may have seen or heard no sign of their approach, until suddenly a tremendous swish of wings is heard over one's bead, and a score or two of them will come tearing down from a great height in the sky in a manner they never use earlier or later in the year. They are purely autumn manoeuvres, but they seem to mean nothing except a .furious delight in motion, as though they might say : "How splendid it is not only to fall, but to go ten times faster than falling—when you have wings !" But though these autumn exercises are clearly concerted, the rooks seem to have little or no military intention. "Aren't they stupid birds, those rooks ? " said a military critic of six the other day. " They're flying in two bodies without any connecting files." And it was impossible not to admit that the censure was well deserved.
Why should there not be a census of rooks taken in the United Kingdom ? It would be quite easy to do. A rookery is not a thing one can overlook. The number of them could soon be taken in each county. Then the nests could be reckoned up, and, say, two old ones and three young ones (allowing for casualties) counted to a nest. It would then be possible to calculate if the rook population is on the increase, as a good many farmers_ and potato-growers say it is. We wonder how far the accusations these make against them are well founded. The case of the potato-grower seems to have more in it than that of the farmer. The following evidence can be
vouched for to show that the farmer's case is not always good. A Warwickshire farmer some years ago employed a man to scare the rooks from his newly sown corn. But a neighbour whose land adjoined, and was also sown with corn, employed no bird-starer, and was, in consequence, one day rallied by the farmer for allowing the rooks to do him mischief. This neigh- bour then consulted his farm bailiff on the point whether they should hire a bird-starer or not. But the bailiff was against it, and gave his opinion that the rooks were more bent on dining off wireworm than wheat, and counselled waiting for a verdict until the following harvest. When the karvest came, the fields. where the bird-starer had been at work showed a far poorer yield than the others, and the bailiff was not slow to appear and claim a verdict of acquittal for hia friends in the case of "Farmer v. Rook."
Previous page
