Rook

“ One morning I was at my window when the field was empty of bird and beast life with the exception of a solitary old rook, a big bird who was a constant attendant and so much bigger than most of the rooks that I had come to know it well. By and by the young cow walked into the field by herself and, after gazing all round as if surprised at finding the place so lifeless, she caught sight of and fixed her eyes on the old rook working at the turf some fifty or sixty yards away. ”

“ Afterwards, when the same bird has the morsel on the ground in good pick-axeing position, a second rook advances upon him with a quick, sideway hop, looking cunning, sardonic, diabolic, and much for which words seem totally wanting. But this attack, though swift and vigorous, is not more successful than the former one. The lucky rook gets off with his booty, and has soon swallowed it. Amongst rooks, the finding of anything by any one of them is a recognised cause of attack by any other. ”

“ The quick eyes of the Bishop had perceived a drift of rooks when on their evening flight to the rookery were passing along the very line which divided the hawk from the heron. A rook is a hard temptation for a hawk to resist. In an instant the inconstant bird had forgotten all about the great heron above her and was circling over the rooks, flying westward with them as she singled out the plumpest for her stoop. ”

“ The one big bird on these downs, as in so many other places in England, is the rook, and let us humbly thank the gods who own this green earth and all the creatures which inhabit it that they have in their goodness left us this one. For it is something to have a rook, although he is not a great bird compared with the great ones lost—bustard and kite and raven and goshawk, and many others. ”

“ We wondered for a moment what in the world could be the matter, for we could not recollect ever seeing a rook, of all our birds the most knowing, perhaps, and self-possessed, act so absurdly. Running forward and laying hold of the bird, we had a ready solution of the mystery in the fact that the poor, struggling creature’s feet were firmly frozen to the log—more firmly than the best bird-lime or glue could have held them. ”

“ If seen from behind, the wings of the rook, as he spreads them and glides, slowly descending, preparatory to alighting, slightly turn up at the edges like the rim of a hat, but much less curved. From a distance as he flies he appears to preserve a level course, neither rising nor falling ”

“ The general intonation of the rook voice is pleasing and musical—how much more so than the roar of an at-home as the door is flung open, even though one has not to go through that door! There is very great modulation and flexibility—more expression, more of a real voice than other birds. One feels that beings producing such sounds must be intelligent and have amiable qualities. ”

“ The rook, like other broad-winged birds, often makes much leeway in flying, though there be only a moderate wind. The beak points in one direction, in which the bird is apparently proceeding, but if observed closely it will be found that the real course is somewhat sideways. He is making leeway. So it is that a rook which looks as if coming straight towards you—as if he must inevitably go overhead—passes some distance to one side. He appears slow on the wing, as if to go fast required more energy than he possessed, yet he travels over great distances without the least apparent exertion. ”

“ But the start at a rook should always be up-wind. To throw off at a down-wind rook is bad falconry. When a rook means to “keep the air,” or beat the hawk in fair flying, he will, after a while, begin to ring, that is, to ascend spirally in circles. Why he should do this, instead of continuing in a straight line, no one, I think, has properly explained. But the road upwards for most birds when they are exerting themselves—be they kites, herons, rooks, or larks—is in spiral circles more or less regular, a very obliging dispensation of nature for those who want to look on at a high flight! ”

“ The third was flying at a less height, and as he came into sight over the line of the wood, he suddenly wheeled round, and holding his immense wings extended, dived, as a rook will, downwards through the air. He twisted from side to side like anything spun round by the finger and thumb as he came down, rushing through the air head first. ”

“ It has been said that the rook in full plumage is no mean flier. He has also a good head on his glossy shoulders, and he shifts cleverly enough while his lungs and muscles hold out. He does not often lose his head, in the metaphysical sense. Sometimes, when particularly close shots graze him, or even feather him, he is frightened into wasting a little breath in an angry complaining croak. ”

“ And there sits in that nest a lady sweet, and she caws with joy, for, afar, she sees the rook she loves the best. Oh, he has been east, and he has been west, and his crop it is full of worms and slugs, and they are all for her.
We are old, old rooks, so many of us. The white is mingling with the purple black upon our breasts. We have seen these tall elms grow from saplings; we have seen the old trees fall and die. ”

“ The most important problem however in connection with the rook is the precise extent to which the bird is the farmer's enemy or his friend. On the solution hangs the rook's fate [52] in an increasingly practical age, which may at any moment put sentiment on one side and decree for it the fate that is already overtaking its big cousin the raven. Scotch farmers have long turned their thumbs down and regarded rooks as food for the gun, but in South Britain the bird's apologists have hitherto been able to hold their own and avert catastrophe from their favourite. ”

“ Rooks would seem to believe that while there is life there is hope. A dead rook displayed before other rooks for the first time attracts no particular attention beyond a casual inspection. But if a rook is wounded, and especially if it hops about with a broken wing, other rooks will swoop about it, and hover above with wonderful perseverance, squawking all the time excitedly, even in spite of a man with a gun. ”

“ This he repeats several times, making little erratic gallops through the black crowd, in curves to one side and another, and appearing to enjoy the fun of causing rook after rook to jump up from the ground. Half-a-dozen times he runs right at a rook that he might easily have avoided, and sits down amongst them two or three times, again. ”

“ The male birds are in a flutter when thou walks through the rookery, they moderate their satisfaction when I pay them a call and it is the female birds who do the honors then.”
“That reminds me, mother, that Britton told me rooks intermarried generation after generation, and that if a rook brought home a strange bride, he was forced to build in a tree the community selected, at some distance from the rookery. ”

“ From the short, fuller neck,—the head bent peeringly downwards,—but, above all, from the hawk-like movements of the wing, the sportsman will be able to distinguish the hooded-crow from the rook at a moment when he may be too distant to observe the black and more hooked bill,—and never let him spare. He should be suspicious of every bird he sees crossing and re-crossing a field,—in reality hunting it with as regular a beat as a pointer’s. ”

“ But one imagines the rooks would still have a sporting chance. Probably crows have a black enough reputation among other birds to inspire a general fear. And rooks are cowards. It is a common sight to see them put to shameful flight by peewits or missel-thrushes when they have ventured near the others' nesting-places. Yet a rook could kill a missel-thrush or peewit if it had the pluck to fight. The gamekeeper knows that the hissing and spitting of a sitting partridge will cause a rook to approach her very cautiously. A jackdaw, one would say, has ten times the spirit of a rook. ”

“ The rook.—The rook (Fig. 206) —often called the crow—is a rather large bird, measuring about 17 inches from head to tail. Its plumage is black, but as it becomes adult the feathers covering the face and nostrils are shed, leaving the skin of these parts bare. The bird has long and pointed wings, and is a strong flier. The bill is stout and almost straight. Rooks are no songsters, their harsh “caw” being destitute of musical qualities. When heard at a distance, however, the cry “becomes a confused noise or chiding ”

“ The farmer who still believes the rook to be his worst enemy, remarks that whatever else the caterpillar or wireworm or slug may do, they cannot root up, or throw over on its side a single root of mangel; whereas he sees with his own eyes that rooks have done it in a score of cases in a single row.—The fact is undeniable: but what makes the rooks take that trouble about a plant which they are not going to eat? ”

“ Here, in company with gulls, turnstones, and other fowl of the foreshore, the rooks strut importantly up and down, digging their powerful bills deep in the ooze and occasionally [47] bullying weaker neighbours out of their hard-earned spoils. The rook is a villain, yet there is something irresistible in the effrontery with which one will hop sidelong on a gorging gull, which beats a hasty retreat before its sable rival, leaving some half-prized shellfish to be swallowed at sight or carried to the greedy little beaks in the tree-tops. ”

“ On dropping a rook, probably at some distance from the rookery, where the men are whose duty it is to collect the slain, beware of carrying the bird; let him lie, or at most throw him upon a bramble bush in a conspicuous spot till a boy comes round. Rooks are perfectly infested with vermin, which in a few minutes will pass up their legs on to your hand, and cause an unpleasant irritation, though it is only temporary; for the insects cannot exist long away from the bird. ”

“ At the moment when the noisy crowd come back to the rookery and settle on their accustomed perches, a simultaneous pull at several lines connected with properly-laid nooses will generally secure a victim or more. Another plan by which a rook is made to look even more foolish is to go round with a plough in a field where rooks come to pick up the worms which it turns up. The rook-catcher must be provided with a number of paper hoods made like large extinguishers, and these he will place upside down in the furrow with a tempting bait—grain, worm, or meat—in their inside. ”

“ When one rook makes his spring into the air at another, this one will sometimes duck down instead of also springing. The springer, then, like 'vaulting ambition,' 'o'erleaps himself and falls on the other side.' I have just seen this. ”

“ If the rook has put in to a very low tree or a tall hedge, he may often be dislodged by throwing sticks and stones at him, or sending a boy up. Sometimes snapping a cap on a pistol, or cracking a whip, or making any other sudden and loud noise, will put him on the wing again. But before going far, he is only too likely to put back to the same place, or to a neighbouring tree, if one is near, or to another part of the hedge. Even when the shelter is only a low line of hurdles, it is quite difficult to hustle out a rook so that the peregrine, waiting on above, may have a fair shot at him. ”

“ The rook is common throughout the British Islands, and is our best-known large land bird, being everywhere the most abundant species, as well as the most conspicuous, owing to his great size, blackness, gregariousness, and habits of perching and nesting on the tops of trees, and of feeding on open grass spaces, where it is visible at a long distance. Without being a favourite of either the gamekeeper or the farmer, he is, in a measure, a protected species, the rookery being looked on as a pleasant and almost indispensable appanage of the country-house. ”

“ CHAPTER II—A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
Whosoever has observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it. ”

“ Rooks can fly with gaps of astonishing size in their wings, and do not seem much incommoded by the loss—caused, doubtless, by a charge of shot in the rook-shooting, or by the small sharp splinters of flint with which the bird-keepers sometimes load their guns, not being allowed to use shot.
Near their nesting-trees their black feathers may be picked up by dozens in the grass; they beat them out occasionally against the small boughs, and sometimes in fighting. ”

“ When one considers the instinctive care with which rooks avoid any one carrying a gun, and which is so evident that I have often heard country people remark that a rook can smell gunpowder, one can more justly estimate the force of their love or friendship in thus continuing to hover round a person who has just destroyed one of their companions with an instrument the dangerous nature of which they seem fully capable of appreciating. ”

“ The rook, both in his plumage as well as in his habits, is a legal bird: he is strongly addicted to discussions, lives in communities, and has altogether the grave appearance of a ‘learned brother.’ But these rooks have ceased to assemble in the Temple Gardens for many years. ”

“ But much more often the rook, when getting the worst of it in the air, abandons the hope of beating his foe in fair mounting and fair manœuvring. Taking advantage of some moment—perhaps after an ineffectual stoop—when his foe is a trifle wide, and on the side farthest from a covert which he has marked as a possible place of refuge, he turns tail, and makes off—down-wind if possible, or if not, across the wind—to that seductive shelter. A wood or spinny is what he would prefer, but a tree of any kind will do—the taller the better. ”