The Rookery
Rooks are the most conservative birds, and sometimes nothing will induce them to form a colony where their presence and their cawing would be the perfecting touches to the trees of some ancestral park. The most hopeful plan to tempt them is to put up old empty nests or brooms, or to put rooks' eggs into a nest that happens to be the desired place for the colony. Their strong preference for certain sites is curious; they will crowd nest-trees on one side of a road, and yet pay no attention to other trees of the same sort, seemingly more perfect for their needs, and only a few yards distant. We have watched a case where for twenty years the rooks remained faithful to the original nest-trees of the colony. About ten years ago half these trees were cut down, and even then the evicted rooks would not build in trees across the road, though their tops touched the tops of the favoured trees, which became more crowded with nests than ever. But two or three seasons ago their favourite nesting-tree, a beech with far-spread top, began to show signs of disease; and then, after a deal of wrangling, two or three pairs were permitted to nest in the trees near by, hitherto despised. In the next season there were nineteen nests in these trees, and in the next twenty-six. The old beech meantime grew more and more feeble, as the rooks perhaps discovered by some brittleness in the twigs at the top; and after one more year, though it bore foliage, but not so luxuriantly as usual, the tree gave shelter to only two nests. And now the long-despised trees are the home of almost the entire colony.
