"March 4th.—I got to the plantation towards the end of the afternoon, and resolved to wait there, in order to see wood-pigeons fly into it in the evening. Not many came, but at six o'clock I saw what I thought was a large band of them fly into an oak-tree which I had noticed just outside the plantation, where they remained for a minute or two. They then flew on to the plantation, sweeping over it once or twice before settling, and I saw that they were rooks. As will be seen from this, they had hitherto been silent. When they had settled in the trees there was some talking, but strangely little, I thought, for rooks, and very soon afterwards there was hardly a sound. They remained thus, for some little time. All at once, with extraordinary suddenness, with a sound of wings so compact and instantaneous that it was almost like the report of a gun, the whole troop burst suddenly out of the trees, which were on the outer edge of the plantation, flew a little way over the heath (I caught them against the fading red of the sky), wheeled round, returned, and shot into them again. There was a little cawing as they got back, but this soon sank, and again there was silence. Then, in a moment, there was the same sudden rush of wings, and the whole black cloud shot, like one bird, into the open sky, wheeled again, and shot back, as before. This occurred nine times in succession, at intervals of not longer, I should think, than three or four minutes. In the later rushes the birds circled several times—flying out again, each time, over the moor—before resettling in the trees. After the last time they settled in a different part of the plantation. Immediately before two of the rushes out, I heard a loud 'caw,' in rather a high-pitched tone, from a single rook, which seemed to be the signal for the exodus, whilst, almost immediately afterwards, there was another single note of quite a different character—deeper and more guttural—from either the same or another bird still in the trees, which seemed to call the rest back again. A well understood signal-note indeed, would be the easiest way of accounting for these sudden and extraordinarily simultaneous flights and returns, but it was only twice out of the nine times, that this explanation seemed tenable. On other occasions, the caw, at starting, seemed only one of many, or did not correspond so exactly, in point of time, with the sudden flight out, as the theory seemed to require, whilst the deep 'quaw,' which seemed to be made by one particular rook, who always stayed behind, and which I had at first thought called the others back, would be heard directly after they had flown, as well as after they had returned. Several times, too, the black cloud and thunder-storm of wings seemed to burst out of silence itself. I came to the conclusion that a signal-note was not the explanation. All I can say is, that—from what cause or actuated by what impulse, I know not—some fifty to a hundred rooks shot, as though they shared one soul, nine times in succession, from those dark pines, circled a little over the dusky moor, and then shot back into them again. No one, except myself, was near. It was one of those very lonely places where, at almost any time, one can count upon seeing no one, and, altogether, it struck me as an extraordinary phenomenon.
"Once more, the old Greek idea of the φημη—a sudden thought, sweeping through a crowd as a wind sweeps through a grove of trees—seemed to me to be the only view which met the facts. But what, then, is the φημη, and whence, or why, the impulse?
"All this time, I should say, though quite near, I was perfectly concealed, standing against a tall pine-tree, around the trunk of which I had helped to make a wigwam—already partly formed—of some of its own fallen and bending branches. This, with the gloom of the plantation itself, and the falling night, was a perfect concealment, even at a foot's pace, as will shortly appear.
"It was just after the last return of the out-shooting birds that, looking up, I saw what I at first supposed was they, but soon found to be another, and a very much more numerous, band of rooks, who, as they came up, were joined by the other ones, in the air. Now, for the first time—for the cloud came up in silence, and, since the last flight out, there had been silence in the plantation too—there was a tremendous clamour of voices, filling the whole place, and then a black, whirling snowstorm of rooks began to shoot, whirr and whizz about, over, into, through, and amongst the fir-trees, in a most extraordinary manner. The rapidity with which they shot about, their hurtlings, their sideway-rushing sweeps and swoops, their quick, smooth turns and gliding zig-zags, avoiding, by miracle, each other and the trunks of trees, was most extraordinary, whilst the whishing noise of their wings through the air was almost frightening. The plantation seemed to be a huge disturbed bee-hive, with great black bees dashing angrily about it. It was a snowstorm with the flakes gone mad; but black, a black, living bird-storm, and it produced in me a feeling of excitement, a peculiar, almost a new, sensation, analogous, perhaps, to what the birds themselves were feeling. What struck me and made it more interesting, was that it was a special exhibition, a 'set thing,' something indulged in by the birds with a peculiar pleasure in the indulgence, something appertaining to the home-coming—the 'heimkehr'—emanating from and requiring a particular, psychical state. This is by far the finest display of the kind I have yet seen, and I was in the very midst of it. Considering the number of birds—there must, I think, have been several hundreds—the speed at which they dashed about and the smallness of the space in which so many were moving with such violence, and so erratically, it seems wonderful that they never came into collision, either with one another or the trunks or branches of the fir-trees. In the plantation, when I came into it, two dead rooks were lying, and I had also picked up a dead one in the larger roosting-place. The keeper said it had been 'turned out,' which was vague, and then, more definitely, that rooks sometimes died of old age. It seems not impossible, or even improbable, that in these violent whizzings of a great number of rooks together, amongst closely growing trees, and in the gloom of evening fading slowly into night, accidents may, sometimes, occur. The rooks, I should say, in their violent whizzing darts and dashes, shot down, sometimes, to about half the height of the trees, and were, in general, right in amongst them. This wonderful scene of bird excitement, lasted, I should think, about ten minutes, in full action, but grew fainter as the trees became more and more packed with birds, till, at length, all were settled. Every tree held several. On two slender ones—not pines but birches—just in front of me, and but a step or two off, there must have been more than twenty. The noise and clamour, during the whole time, was tremendous."
It is not always that rooks dash thus madly to rest. Here—on the very next evening and at the same place—is another type of the home-coming.
"March 5th.—A little after 5.30, a hooded crow flies into the clump of pines. Whether it stays there for the night, with the rooks, I cannot tell, but it does not seem to me improbable. I have seen single birds of the former species flying amidst large bands of the latter, and they are constantly together in the fields, where they behave, in regard to each other, very much as though they were of the same species.
"At 6.10, which is later than the first batch of rooks came yesterday, five birds fly over the plantation but do not go down into it.
"At 6.15 a large, united flock of, perhaps, six or seven hundred fly up from over the ploughed land skirting the moor. They utter the 'chug-a, chug-a' note, characteristic of the homeward flight, but quietly; there is very little noise. Just before reaching the plantation they make a sort of circling eddy in the air—becoming, as it were, two streams that drift through each other—then sail on together and circle some three or four times exactly over it, before descending into its midst. This they do without any of the excited sweeping about of yesterday, and though, of course, the voice of so many birds is considerable, yet, comparatively, it is very subdued, and in a very short time—about five minutes—they all seem settled. Before long, however, some of them, but quite an inconsiderable number, rise and fly about over the trees again, but soon resettle, and there is, now, a deepening silence. No one could imagine that that little lonely clump of trees held all that great army of birds. All, to-night, has been wonderfully decorous. There was something majestic in the way the rooks flew up—slow-seeming yet swiftly-moving. Their flight round, over the trees, before sinking, like night and with the night, upon them, was a fine sombre scene—the thickening light ('light thickens and the crow ——'), the silent, lonely-spreading moor, the gloomy trees, and, above them, slow-circling in the dusky air, that inky cloud of life. It was gloomy, the effect—saddening, yet with the joy of nature's sadness. The spirit of Macbeth was in it—'Here on this blasted heath'—
'Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,