British Birds in Their Haunts

by C. A. Johns

THE ROOK
CORVUS FRÚGILEGUS

Plumage black, with purple and violet reflections; base of the beak, nostrils; and region round the beak bare of feathers and covered with a white scurf, iris greyish white; beak and feet black. Length eighteen inches; breadth three feet. Eggs pale green, thickly blotched with olive and dark-brown.

As the Hooded Crow is essentially the type of the Corvidæ in Scandinavia and the Isles of Scotland, where the Carrion Crow and Rook are all but unknown, so in England the representative of the tribe is the Rook, a bird so like the Crow that it is called by its name almost as frequently as by its own, yet so different in habits that, instead of being under a perpetual and universal ban, it is everywhere encouraged and indeed all but domesticated. There are few English parks that do not boast of their rookery, and few proprietors of modern demesnes pretending to be parks, who would not purchase at a high price the air of antiquity and respectability connected with an established colony of these birds. Owing to their large size and the familiarity with which they approach the haunts of men, they afford a facility in observing their habits which belongs to no other birds; hence all treatises on Natural History, and other publications which enter into the details of country life in England, abound in anecdotes of the Rook. Its intelligence, instinctive appreciation of danger, voracity, its utility or the reverse, its nesting, its morning repasts and its evening flights, have all been observed and more or less faithfully recorded again and again; so that its biography is better known than that of any other British bird. It would be no difficult task to compile from these materials a good-sized volume, yet I doubt not that enough remains untold, or at least not sufficiently authenticated, to furnish a fair field of inquiry to any competent person who would undertake to devote his whole attention to this one bird for a considerable period of time. Such a biographer should make himself master of all that has been recorded by various authorities, and should then visit a large number of rookeries in all parts of the kingdom, collecting and sifting evidence, making a series of personal observations, and spreading his researches over all seasons of the year. Such an inquiry, trivial though it may seem, would be most useful, for the Rook, though it has many friends, has also many enemies, and, being everywhere abundant, its agency for good or evil must have serious results. The following account being imperfect from want of space, the reader who wishes to know more about this interesting bird must refer to our standard works on Ornithology, and, above all, record and compare his own personal observations.

In the early spring months Rooks subsist principally on the larvæ and worms turned up by the plough, and without gainsay, they are then exceedingly serviceable to the agriculturist, by destroying a vast quantity of noxious insects which, at this period of their growth, feed on the leaves or roots of cultivated vegetables. Experience has taught them that the ploughman either has not the power or the desire to molest them; they therefore approach the plough with perfect fearlessness, and show much rivalry in their efforts to be first to secure the treasures just turned up. During the various processes to which the ground is subjected in preparation for the crop, they repeat their visits, spreading more widely over the field, and not only pick up the grubs which lie on the surface, but bore for such as, by certain signs best known to themselves, lie concealed. I need not say that in all these stages the wisdom of the farmer is to offer them every inducement to remain; all that they ask is to be let alone. Not so, however, when the seed-crop is sown. Grain, pulse, and potatoes are favourite articles of diet with them, and they will not fail to attack these as vigorously as they did the grubs a few days before. They are therefore undeniably destructive at this season, and all available means should be adopted to deter them from alighting on cultivated ground. About the second week in March they desert the winter roosting places, to which they had nightly congregated in enormous flocks, leave off their wandering habits, and repair as if by common consent to their old breeding places. Here, with much cawing and bustling, they survey the ruins of their old nests, or select sites for new ones, being guided by their instinct to avoid all those trees the upper branches of which are too brittle for their purpose either because the trees are sickly or in an incipient state of decay. Hence, when it has occasionally happened that a nestless tree in a rookery has been blown down, the birds have been saluted as prophets, while in reality the tree yielded to the blast before its fellows because it was unsound, the Rooks knowing nothing about the matter except that signs of decay had set in among the upper twigs while as yet all seemed solid beneath. How the birds squabble about their nests, how they punish those thievishly disposed, how they drive away intruders from strange rookeries, how scrupulously they avoid, during building, to pick up a stick that has chanced to drop, how the male bird during incubation feeds his mate with the most luscious grubs brought home in the baggy pouch at the base of his bill, how every time that a bird caws while perched he strains his whole body forward and expands his wings with the effort, all these things, and many more, I must pass over without further notice, leaving them to be verified by the reader with the help of a good field-glass. I must, however, mention, in passing, the custom so generally adopted by sportsmen, of shooting the young birds as soon as they are sufficiently fledged to climb from their nests to the adjoining twigs, or to perform their first tentative flight over the summits of the trees. It is supposed to be necessary to keep down their numbers, but this is a disputed point. I have, however, little doubt that Rooks during the whole of their lives associate the memory of these battues with the appearance of a man armed with a gun. Many people believe that Rooks know the smell of powder: they have good reason to know it; but that they are as much alarmed at the sight of a stick as a gun in the hand of a man, may be proved by any one who, chancing to pass near a flock feeding on the ground, suddenly raises a stick. They will instantly fly off, evidently in great alarm.

While the young are being reared, the parent birds frequent corn-fields and meadows, where they search about for those plants which indicate the presence of a grub at the root. Such they unscrupulously uproot, and make a prize of the destroyer concealed beneath. They are much maligned for this practise, but without reason; for, admitting that they kill the plant as well as the grub, it must be borne in mind that several of the grubs on which they feed (cockchafer and daddy-longlegs) live for several years underground, and that, during that period, they would if left undisturbed, have committed great ravages. I have known a large portion of a bed of lettuces destroyed by a single grub of Melolontha, having actually traced its passage underground from root to root, and found it devouring the roots of one which appeared as yet unhurt. Clearly, a Rook would have done me a service by uprooting the first lettuce, and capturing its destroyer.

I must here advert to a peculiar characteristic of the Rook which distinguishes it specifically from the Crow. The skin surrounding the base of the bill, and covering the upper part of the throat, is, in the adult birds, denuded of feathers. Connected with this subject many lengthy arguments have been proposed in support of two distinct opinions: one, that the bareness above mentioned is occasioned by the repeated borings of the bird for its food; the other, that the feathers fall off naturally at the first moult, and are never replaced. I am inclined to the latter view, and that for two reasons: first, if it be necessary (and that is not at all clear) that the Rook, in order to supply itself with food, should have no feathers at the base of its bill, I believe that nature would not have resorted to so clumsy a contrivance, and one so annoying to the bird, as that of wearing them away bit by bit: and, secondly, the bare spot is, as far as I have observed, of the same size and shape in all birds, and at all periods of the year, a uniformity which can scarcely be the result of digging in soils of various kinds, and at all seasons. I cannot, therefore, but think that the appearance in question is the result of a law in the natural economy of the bird, that the feathers are not rubbed off, but fall off, and that they are not renewed, because nature never intended that they should grow there permanently; if not, why is there no similar abrasion in the Crow? The number of lambs eaten by Crows is very small after all, and birds' eggs are not always in season, nor is carrion so very abundant; so that, during a great portion of the year, even Crows must dig for their livelihood, and the great distinction between a Crow and a Rook is, that the former has actually no bare space at the base of his bill. But the question is still open, and the reader may make his own observations, which in Natural History, as well as in many other things, are far better than other people's theories.

In very dry summer weather, Rooks are put to great shifts in obtaining food. Grubs and worms descend to a great depth to get beyond the influence of the drought, and the soil is too parched and hard for digging; they then retire to the sea-shore, to marshes, fresh-water and salt, to cabbage and potato gardens, and in the last-named localities they are again disposed to become marauders. To fruit gardens they are rarely permitted to resort, or they would commit great ravages. As the season advances, ripe walnuts are a very powerful attraction, and when they have discovered a tree well supplied with fruit, a race ensues between them and the proprietor as to which shall appropriate the greater share, so slyly do they watch for opportunities, and so quick are they in gathering them and carrying them off in their beaks. In long winter frosts, or when the ground is covered with snow, they are again reduced to straits. Some resort to the sea-shore and feed on garbage of all kinds, some to turnip-fields where they dig holes in the bulbs. They have also been observed to chase and kill small birds, which, as near starvation as themselves, have been unable to fly beyond their reach, and I have even seen a Rook catch a small fish.

I must not conclude this imperfect sketch without noticing a peculiar habit of Rooks, which is said to portend rain. A flock will suddenly rise into the air almost perpendicularly, with great cawing and curious antics, until they have reached a great elevation, and then, having attained their object, whatever that may be, drop with their wings almost folded till within a short distance of the ground, when they recover their propriety, and alight either on trees or on the ground with their customary grave demeanour. Occasionally in autumn, as White of Selborne remarks,

Sooth'd by the genial warmth, the cawing Rook