enemies that hide in the soil, the rook will feed on turnips. When the potatoes are coming on, the rooks go down between the hills prodding in the earth for the worms and larvæ that assemble to eat the young tubers, and, it may be, eating many of them themselves. When hens’ eggs are left undefended the rook will carry them off. But how very trifling such damage is as compared with the good that is done by this hard-working bird. I have myself allowed an acre of potatoes to swarm day after day with rooks, and when the crop was gathered it was a first-rate one. After that one experience, and the absolute proof of the innocence of those rooks when in my potato-field, I need hardly say that when any farmer complains, or scientist asserts, that these birds do injury to potatoes when growing, I know he is saying “the thing that is not.” I have also had eggs stolen by rooks from a nest that a vagabond fowl had made for herself in the tall meadow-grass. But was the rook to blame? Certainly not. What right has a hen to go and lay her eggs in a meadow, carefully hiding them from her friends in the tall grass, but leaving them conspicuously exposed to every bird that flies over them? As for its depredation on turnips, what difference in the amount of sheep-food do the rooks’ pilferings make in a twenty-acre crop? Instead of grumbling, the intelligent farmer should scatter a barrow-load or two of mangolds conspicuously over the field for the frozen-out birds to eat at their comfort and to keep them from pecking the crops.
Indeed, there is scarcely any other bird that has more claims upon the agriculturist’s goodwill. From sunrise to sunset rooks are always at work, following the farmer’s men wherever they are disturbing the ground, and exterminating insects that are thus exposed. At other times they are patrolling the meadows, going over every foot of ground with extraordinary patience, and we may be sure that nothing that moves escapes their keen inquisitorial eye. When the nests are filled with young ones, the destruction of insect life must be prodigious, for rooks are large birds, and the voracity of the nestlings is enormous. But so long as people will call them crows, and as the immemorial infamy of that name clings to it, so long will the unfortunate birds be persecuted.
Yet in downright industry the farmer has few such friends, or the insect-world such foes. Up in the morning, before the dew is off the grass, before the lark is in the sky, the rooks are hard at work, disposing of the “first worm” and of the winded things of sunshine, which, clogged with moisture, are unable to rise from the ground. As soon as the men are afield, the rooks go to them, following them up and down with unwearying diligence, and tracking the plough, the harrow, and the spade, with the fierce unsparing scrutiny of inquisitors. There is no appeal from them. They hold their court upon the spot, and the summary procedure of their penal code is the same for all malefactors alike.
In another respect, this hard-living bird is deserving of regard, for it prefers the vicinity of human dwellings, and likes to live as near man as possible. Next to a heronry the existence of a rookery is always considered to add a charm to an estate, and not without reason, for, besides investing the place with a fine air of undisturbed ancestral repose, there is something very pleasant and soothing in the clamour of rooks in the peopled elms. To those who care to watch them, the burghers of these “airy cities” are a very entertaining folk. All through the winter, individuals, or small parties visit their nests, just as if they came to inspect and report upon the condition of “their wicker eyries,” and in February these visits become very frequent, the earlier birds pilfering from other nests to add to and strengthen their own. By-and-by the whole community begins to assemble, and the rookery is in most amusing uproar all day, for, for some extraordinary reason, they will not leave each other’s nests alone, but for the sake of one paltry twig, will lay themselves open to retaliations, which result in the entire wrecking of their nests by outraged neighbours, who, though they are so noisily indignant at the thefts of others, are themselves each in turn soon after caught stealing and punished.
And yet somehow or another the nests, in spite of ruinous altercations, manage to get finished, and as soon as eggs are laid, the republic is as orderly as could be expected. But even then, no nest is left undefended. In due course the young rooks are hatched, and the truly terrible task of feeding five mouths is imposed upon the parents. But by constant industry they fulfil their duties, and by the end of April, or early in May, the nestlings scramble off their nests on to the boughs, and by feeble flutterings from point to point, keeping close to their nest all the time, practise and strengthen their wings. Their first flight to the ground is a sight to watch, for the youngsters are very nervous, and the old bird’s patience is sometimes so sorely tried that, having coaxed them to fly in vain, she pushes them off the branch at last. Once on the ground they soon learn what to eat, and how to find it; but the instinct to go to the parents for food is so absurdly persistent, that you may often see a rook that looks as big as its mother, hurriedly gobbling up its own worm, in order to go and ask its mother for hers. And the gravity with which the old bird swallows the worm herself, and then turns to the overgrown young one, with a “Don’t you wish you may get it, my dear?” is delightful. So tenacious are these birds of their old haunts that they are still to be found building in the central postal district of London, although the steady growth of the city makes the distances they have to fly for food longer and longer every year, while the perils they have to encounter on the way, telegraph and telephone wires, are annually accumulating. But there they are, in spite of growing London, and are the very first to bring the news to the city that spring is coming in the country.
“From the neighbouring vale
The Cuckoo, straggling up the hill-tops
Shouteth faint tidings of some gladder place.”
Wordsworth.
Long after the rook, the thrush, and blackbird have told us of the change of season, “the vernal cuckoo” comes shouting “the same song to sing.” There is no parable in Nature so hard to interpret as this bird which the ancients, themselves puzzled, placed on the sceptre of Juno and the shoulder of Venus. The poet who hesitated to call it a bird—
“Shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery,”—