"One thing, however, I record as a fact, which appears to me somewhat curious. Though the plantation is continuous, without any break other than the narrow path that runs through its centre, and though it is simply crowded with rooks, every tree holding a great many, yet I notice that an outbreak of sound in any particular part of it does not spread over the whole, as one might have supposed that it would, but dies gradually out, as it radiates from the point where it arose. Thus, there are zones of sound, isolated from each other by intervening areas of silence. Just at this moment, after I have sat, for some time, silent, and all alarm has subsided, there is a great clamorous outburst some little way off. It must have some special cause which I cannot divine, but this commotion does not, any more than the lesser ones, spread itself through the packed community, but is strictly isolated. How strange this seems! A parliament (though I heard no nonsense talked) of lively, eminently gregarious birds, all of which are noisy at one time or another, and from the thick of them a storm of clamour bursts: would not one think that the birds sitting cheek by jowl with the stormers would storm too, and so 'pass it on'? Why should there be a periphery, and what should limit the chorus except the bound of the plantation itself? Do crowds shout in patches? That the clamour should cease, after a time, is, of course, natural, but why, though it died along the road by which it travelled, should it not keep travelling on, through all the black, serried ranks? If rooks were influenced only by the outward manifestations of each other's emotions, one might, surely, expect this. But now, if they were influenced more by the thought itself, rapidly transmitted from one to another of them, then, whenever this factor ceased, for whatever reason, to act, the birds beyond the limits of its action might be unaffected by the cries of those who had felt its influence, for they would have been accustomed to look for a sign from within, and not from without. They might then hear, on some occasions, without being impelled, though on other occasions they might choose, to join. It may be difficult to realise such a psychical state, but that does not, of itself, make the state impossible. Its possibility would depend upon the reality or not of collective thinking, or thought-transference, and observation is (or should be) our only means of deciding as to this.
"As light struggles out of the darkness, the silence is broken more and more frequently, at some point or other of the plantation, so that the sound is disseminated over a larger and larger space, till, for some little while before the flight, the whole rookery seems to be talking at one and the same time. In reality, however, there is a constant cessation and renewal on the part of each individual bird.
"At 6.30 the sounds take a deeper and more emphatic tone. There is more solemnity, more meaning, and the meaning grows plainer and plainer as the asseveration becomes more and more emphatic, that 'it is, yes is, is really, positively is, is, is, is, is the morning.'
"At 6.35 there is the light, joyous 'chug-a, chug-a, chug-a,' besides which one catches—if one has a good ear—'hook, chook,—hook, took—hook-a-hoo-loo—chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck,—polyglot, polyglot.'
"Then there is a question—a serious and solemnly propounded question—'Quow-yow?' The answer—from another rook—is immediate and undoubted—'Yow-quow.'
"There are sounds which just miss being articulate and just evade one's efforts to write them down. It is significant that I have to use the word 'talking' to describe the rook's utterances. It is the one word; another would sound forced and strained.
"Throughout the babel, there is a tendency for it to sink and rise in sudden accentuations and diminishments. Now there is a diminishment, and a bird in the tree next to mine gives a sleepy stretch out of one wing, which has all the appearance of a yawn. But I see no other bird yawning, nor do I notice any toilette, any preening of the feathers.
"Now, at close on 7, the flight out is preceded by a flight of the birds inside the plantation, from one tree to another, and this passes, gradually, into the full forth-streaming. Just above the trees, now, they pass in endless flakes of a black and living snowstorm. Their flight is swift, hurrying, joyous. They flap, but there are, often, long sweeps on outspread wings, between the flaps. And ever, as they fly, they greet the cold, stern morning with their joy-song of 'chow-how, a-chuck, a-chuck, a-chuck, a-chuck, a-chuck-a.'
"Nearly a month later, a smaller, but still numerous, body of the birds had chosen a new roosting-place—a clump of Scotch firs on a lonely heath, which had stood vacant all the winter, a point interesting in itself, but which—for the old reason—I am unable to discuss.