“In the same class, too, we must place the mantled daw, so called from the sort of grayish-white cloak that reaches from the shoulders to the tail both in front and on the back. The rest of the plumage is black, with glints of blue, like the raven’s. This bird comes to us toward the end of autumn, joins the company of black crows and rooks, and may be seen searching our fields for larvæ and sprouting grain. On the seashore, where its numbers are much greater than in the interior, it lives on fish and mollusks cast up by the waves or left by fishermen. Only under dire necessity will it touch carrion, the favorite food of the black crow and the raven. In March the mantled daw leaves us, to go and breed in the North.
“The rook, which is a little smaller than the black crow, has the latter’s plumage, but with more of a violet and coppery luster. Its beak, too, is more nearly straight and has a sharper tip. It is readily distinguished from the crow and the raven by the characteristic mark of its occupation, the skin of its forehead and around the beak being bare of feathers and looking white and powdery, like a scar. Is the bird born like that? Not at all. Just as a workman handling rough and heavy objects makes his [[163]]hands callous, so the rook acquires by its work the rough and scaly skin so noticeable on its forehead. It is a tireless digger and its beak is its pick, which it thrusts into the ground as deeply as it can. From constant friction with the soil the forehead and the base of the beak lose their feathers and become bald, or even have the skin itself worn away so as to leave a rough scar. The rook’s object in this toilsome operation is to capture white worms and all the destructive larvæ that are such a scourge to our cultivated fields. I saw some rooks one day hard at work in a waste tract of land, lifting up and turning over the stones scattered here and there. So eager were they that they sometimes threw the smaller stones as high as a man’s head. Now guess what they were looking for so busily. They were looking for insects and all sorts of vermin. In this work of turning over stones and digging in the soil rooks cannot fail to injure their tool, the beak, and they must rub the feathers off from its base.
“I should have a high opinion of these birds if they contented themselves with hunting insects; but unfortunately they have a decided fondness for sprouting seeds, a dainty dish that they exert all their ingenuity to procure. It is said that they bury acorns and leave them in the ground until they begin to sprout and have lost their bitter taste, when they dig them up and eat them.”
“What a bright idea!” Emile exclaimed. “The hard, bitter acorn is buried in the ground to get mellow, and when the rook thinks it has stayed there [[164]]just long enough he has so good a memory he can go and find it again and dig it up. By that time it is just right to eat, soft and sweet and a fine feast for Mr. Rook.”
“So far there is nothing to find fault with,” said Uncle Paul. “A bushel more or less of acorns is a small matter, and I willingly hand them over to the rooks to dispose of in their curious fashion. But other sprouting seeds suit them equally well, especially wheat, which they can so easily procure in winter in the recently sown fields. When I see a flock of rooks sedately pacing the furrows and plunging their beaks in here and there where the ground is softened by a thaw, I know well enough those birds might pretend they were hunting for June-bug larvæ, but he would be a simpleton indeed who accepted this explanation at that time of year, when the worms are all too deep in the ground for the rook’s beak to reach them. It is wheat they are really after, and as rooks go in very large flocks, which may even darken the sky in their flight, you can easily understand that such reapers make short work of their harvest. Nor is that all: in the autumn rooks consume great quantities of walnuts and chestnuts, and in the spring they dig up potato fields to obtain the newly planted tubers.”
“Couldn’t they live on dead animals, as the black crow and the raven do?” asked Louis.
“No; a rook, however hungry, will not touch a dead animal. It must have seeds and fruit or larvæ and insects; and as it chooses one or the other of [[165]]these kinds of food, the rook is our foe or our friend. So there are two opinions about the bird. Some persons, remembering only its thefts, would wage a relentless war against it, feeling that each rook destroyed means a bushel of wheat gained. Others, mindful chiefly of its destruction of larvæ and insects, maintain that the rook deserves kind treatment at the farmer’s hands because it rids his fields of vermin, following the plowman to pick up white worms in the furrows and plunging its sharp beak into the ground for the grubs of the June-bug. For these excellent reasons they declare the rook worthy of our protection.”
“Then which of the two opinions are we to accept?” was Louis’s query.
“To my thinking, neither of them, but something half-way between, as in the case of the mole. If white worms abound, let us bear with the rook, as it makes war on these enemies of ours; but if we have no need of its help, let us chase the bird from our fields. In our warfare on destructive insects we have two real helpers, the mole and the rook; but unfortunately we have to weigh their ravages against their services. Accordingly, let us treat them with forbearance if we have a worse ill to dread, but rid ourselves of their presence if our fields are in good condition.
“All the year round the rook lives with its own kind. It goes in flocks to seek food, and in flocks it chooses its breeding-place. Sometimes a single oak has a dozen nests, with as many in each of the trees [[166]]around, over a large tract of ground. There is great commotion in this aërial city at the time of nest-building, for rooks are very clamorous and also much given to stealing from their neighbors. When a young and inexperienced couple suspend building operations for a moment, to go and get further material for construction, the neighbors pillage the half-completed nest; this one carries off a little stick, that one a blade of grass and some moss, to use in their own work. On their return the robbed ones are thrown into a terrible passion, accuse this one and that one, take counsel with friends, and attack the robbers furiously if the theft has not been cleverly concealed. Experienced couples never leave the nest unguarded, but one stays and watches while the other goes for building material.