Often during the building season the rookery is disturbed by discordant notes, accompanied by a great fluttering of wings; there is a big row in the township; not a duel over a “squaw”: the rook is a philosopher, and the ritual of love-making and matrimony are of the simplest. The bother will be over divergent interests or a disputed claim, for there is a recognised right of property—not ground-rent to pay, but a specified limit for nest-room has been accorded. The trouble occurs mostly with young birds wishing to place their nests too near to an old nest. A parish council is called, with the result that the disputants’ nests are soon scattered to the winds, and the claimant and the defendant may both have to begin a new foundation. Sometimes there is a disturbance on a more limited scale: one between very near neighbours or blood-relations—a family jar, in fact. One pair of birds do their very best to pull the sticks from the nest of another pair: each of the contending parties will do all they can to prevent the other from building.
As to the nests, we all know how busily the rooks set to work to repair these after a gale of wind has wrought some havoc in their colonies; but I do not think it is equally well known that they are curiously weather-wise, and they scent the coming storm and set to work to repair and strengthen before the imminent gale has been evident to the farmer. I have noticed that fact; the Rook’s powers of sight and hearing are remarkable.
At the end of the breeding-season comes the farmers’ rook-shooting, which I, for one, never take part in: I have too much regard for the labours of both the adult and the young birds. About the roots of each of the turnip-plants there may gather scores of wireworms, which eat the turnips; in the crops of young birds which have been shot are found myriads of these wireworms, or it may be that they are filled with grubs of various sorts, the larvæ of cockchafers, etc. In fact, in my opinion—that of a tenant farmer who is forced to make things pay—all the Rook’s acts of depredation ought to be forgotten if we carefully consider the great services he renders to the agriculturist. Beetles, tipula (Daddy Longlegs grubs), warble grubs, oak-leaf roller caterpillars, and the caterpillars of the diamond-backed moth he devours. The game-preserver may grudge the birds their plundering of his nests, but the farmer is in gratitude bound to spare them. A lot of young birds at the rook-shooting time are still unable to take a flight of any distance, but others are, happily for themselves, able to fly well. I am persuaded that the old parent birds often—foreseeing a shooting raid—get these out of the way, and so they secure life for a number of their young who might have been sacrificed. They betake themselves in parties to their rootings about the elms upon outlying pastures. Daily they grow stronger on the wing, and learn the ways and means of living.
Like all long-lived creatures, the Rook is temperate in eating, and he is capable of going a long time without food—a faculty which stands him in good stead during hard winters. In a long frost or a prolonged drought he is a most determined robber, and when he is on what he knows to be forbidden ground, he posts a sentinel to give warning of the approaching farmer or watcher. He is known to take the eggs of such favourite birds as the thrush and the blackbird, whose nests are open, and therefore soon discovered and plundered. But this is no doubt where his proper food is scarce; and if man had not been so eager in the destruction of some of our birds of prey, who are the natural enemies of him and his, Rooks would be less plentiful in some districts. Still, I for one have no desire to see their numbers decrease, so certain am I of their value; and I believe this bird will become even more valuable as time goes on.
The Rook is somewhat smaller than the Hooded Crow; the beak more slender, rather straighter; the base of it in mature age bare, and covered with a kind of white scurf. The entire bird is black with a steely-blue and purple gloss. The feet black and thick, the claws strong, the sole rough; it walks better than the Hooded Crow. The beak of the young bird is not bare, the nostrils being covered with bristly feathers. The bareness first appears when the bird begins to dig in the ground for its food.
The open nest tempts the Rook.