"I now notice a hare a little on the outside of the phalanx of rooks, at the part of it nearest to myself. All at once he makes a little run towards them as if charging them, and sits down, making one of their first line, and almost, as it seems, touching two or three. After sitting here for some while the hare makes another little run, this time right in amongst the rooks, several of which he puts up as though on purpose—each of the birds giving a little jump into the air with raised wings, and coming down again. He then sits down as before, but this time all amongst them. This he repeats several times, making little erratic gallops through the black crowd, in curves to one side and another, and appearing to enjoy the fun of causing rook after rook to jump up from the ground. Half-a-dozen times he runs right at a rook that he might easily have avoided, and sits down amongst them two or three times, again. At last, in a final gallop, he pierces the squadron and continues on, over the land. This certainly appeared to me to show a sense of fun, if not of humour, on the hare's part, and as—with a few noted exceptions—it is the rarest thing to see one species of animal take any notice of another, I was proportionately interested.
"It is now half-past four, and for about an hour the great assemblage has been increased by a perpetual stream of rooks, that sail up and descend into it with joyous wheels and sweeps. For some time, too, flocks of the birds have been flying from the ground into trees near. They fly by relays, and from the farthest part of the troop—that is to say, from that part which is farthest distant from the woods where they are to roost. First one band of birds and then another rises from the outer extremity, flies over the rest, ascending gradually, and wings its way to the trees. By these successive flights the assemblage is a good deal shrunk, and does not cover nearly so much ground, when the remainder—still an enormous number—rise like a black snowdrift whirled by the wind into the air, and circle in a dark cloud, now hardly visible in the darkening sky, above the roosting-trees, with a wonderful babel of cries and noise of wings.
"At 4.40 this deep musical sound of innumerable crying, cawing, clamouring throats is still continuing, and once, I think, the birds rise from the trees into which they have sunk, and circle round them again. Now they are in the trees once more, but the lovely cawing murmur—the hum, as though rooks were rooky bees—still goes on.
"4.47.—It is sinking now. Much more subdued and slumberous, deliciously soothing, a rook lullaby.
"December 11th.—A stern winter's day, the earth lightly snow-covered, but bright and fine in the morning. At 3 P.M. I am where the rooks roost, a plantation of fir-trees—larches—dark, gloomy and sombre, with a path, piercing them like a shaft of light, over-arched with their boughs, silvered now with light snow-wreaths. Just in this gloomy patch they sleep, but with a light belt of smaller firs opposite, or with adjoining woods of oak and beech they will have nothing to do, leaving these latter to the wood-pigeons.
Rooks: A Winter Scene.
"At 4.30 I leave the woods and find the rooks gathered in the same place as yesterday, but in far less numbers. Shortly, a large band flies up and swoops down with all sorts of turns and twists, and turns right over in the air—a striking sight, the air full of the rushing sound of their wings—a bird-storm, a black descending whirlwind. At 4.35 the rooks all fly from the ground into a small clump of fir-trees near. Great numbers of other ones are flying up and settling in a plantation of small firs, fringing another part of the field, quite filling it. The snow seems to drive them from the ground, their conclave to-day must be held in the trees.
"They are gathering, now, from all parts, filling the trees round about the ploughed land—now all white—flying in flocks about them, then descending into them again.