Page:BirdWatchingSelous.djvu/314

276, 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. This is taken as a matter of course by the bird attacked, and if he holds (and swallows) his own, which, as he has a clear advantage, he generally does, no resentment is manifested by him—there is not even a slight coolness after the incident is over. If, however, the attack should be successful, then it is very different. The annoyance is too great for the robbed bird, and he becomes very warm indeed. He makes persistent violent rushes after the robber, is most pertinacious, and clearly shows that kind of exasperation which would be felt by a man under similar circumstances. It seems not so much his own loss, as the success and triumphant bearing of the other bird, that upsets him. He has failed where he ought to have been successful, and of this he seems conscious.

"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. The rook that bobbed seemed to have scored a point, and to know it, which the other one confessed shamefacedly—no, indescribably, a rook cannot look